Should we rename browser name/browser version to be targeted towards the platform

[InstyleVII]

MicrosoftWebDriver.exe can be used to test both the Edge browser as well as any apps that are either a Windows Web App (WWA) or contain a WebView. It seems odd then that a developer would specify a browser name when they're testing their WWA or the WebView within their UWP.

I imagine similar issues arise for ChromeDriver targeting Android WebViews and the like. What are peoples thoughts on this?

[InstyleVII]

While I see the primary use is for browsers it's also mainly for the rendering engine of the browser, as WebDriver makes no effort to test the UI (however remote ends have implemented their own WebDriver API surface to test the UI like Firefox).

I think it might be a good idea to make this the rendering engine being targeted but that might only work with our architecture and not others.

[shs96c]

What's the concrete suggestion here? Neither browserName or browserVersion are required fields in the parameters for New Session, and as a web-focused spec, the requirement to return the UA's name and version doesn't seem onerous.

Cloud providers already suggest people put something different in their new session payloads, and things like Appium have already suggested using different fields.

[InstyleVII]

While it's not called out in the New Session command, it is called out as having a default to be compared to in the Match Capabilities section. Maybe that section should just be updated to include that the defaults can be null (it certainly can be interpreted that way but they seem required on first read).

[andreastt]

Which defaults do you refer to? Those assigned to matched capabilities in step 1? The point of the matching algorithm is that these can never be null, but produce an effective dictionary of capabilities after input validation of the capabilities given by the user.

[InstyleVII]

True but that also makes them defaults, so we end up having two sections where we specify default capabilities. Match to validate and then New Session to also validate. Seems like this could be one section that handles both (possibly moving the default capabilities in New Session into Match).