Selenium WebDriver typing very slow in text field on IE browser

Question

I'm running one of my scripts on IE 11 browser with Selenium 2.43.1 when the script types in text field using following:

element.sendKeys("string");

In IE browser, I can see that one character of string is typed in text field and it waits for 1-2 seconds before typing next character. Means for typing one character it's taking 1-2 seconds.

1. Why is typing so slow with IE?
2. Is there any alternate way to speed up typing?

Answer 1

My issue was with the driver architecture, and fixed it by downloading and using a 32bit one.

To switch to 32 bit here is what you have to do

1. Download 32 bit driver service from http://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/index.html

2. Instantiate your InterExplorerWeDriver class using InternetExplorerDriverService class with path to 32 bit driver service.

   InternetExplorerDriver ieDiver = new InternetExplorerDriver(“Path to the 32 bit Explorer driver”);

OR if using a builder:

System.setProperty(“webdriver.ie.driver”,“C:\\drivers\\IEDriverServer.exe”);
DesiredCapabilities ieCapabilities=DesiredCapabilities.internetExplorer();
ieCapabilities.setCapability(InternetExplorerDriver
 .INTRODUCE_FLAKINESS_BY_IGNORING_SECURITY_DOMAINS,true);
ieCapabilities.setCapability("requireWindowFocus", true);
File ie_temp=newFile(“C:\\Selenium\\IEDrivertemp”);
InternetExplorerDriverService.Builder 
ies=newInternetExplorerDriverService.Builder();
ies.withExtractPath(ie_temp);
InternetExplorerDriverService service=ies.build();
WebDriver driver=newInternetExplorerDriver(service,ieCapabilities))

The thread that helped me resolve

http://forumsqa.com/question/typing-too-slow-in-text-fields-while-replaying-tests/