2025-10-31 –, Auditorium
Testing modern web applications often means dealing with sessions, cookies, and other stateful data, especially when testing login flows, e-commerce behavior, or personalization features. Traditionally, Selenium-based tests have handled this by spinning up a new browser instance per test. This ensures isolation, but at a significant cost: high memory usage, long startup times, and slower test runs.
What if you could maintain that isolation but with a single browser instance?
In this talk, I’ll walk through how the new WebDriver BiDi (Bidirectional Protocol) enables just that using user contexts to create isolated sessions (tabs) within one browser instance. We'll explore how to write Python tests that take advantage of this, reduce resource usage, and even scale more effectively in CI/CD or containerized environments like Kubernetes.
Whether you're running local tests or using Selenium Grid on the cloud, you'll leave this session with practical techniques to modernize your test setup without compromising on reliability.
The biggest bottleneck in browser automation today is the browser itself, more specifically, the overhead of spinning up multiple instances for parallel testing. Each browser consumes CPU, memory, and time. Yet, we still need test isolation to avoid flakiness caused by shared state like cookies or local storage.
This talk introduces a smarter, leaner approach using WebDriver BiDi and user contexts, a new feature available in modern Selenium and supported by browsers like Firefox and Chrome. Using this, you can run multiple fully isolated sessions (tabs) within a single browser instance, even in parallel, drastically reducing startup time and infrastructure cost.
We’ll cover:
• A quick overview of how Selenium traditionally handles session isolation
• Introduction to WebDriver BiDi and what makes it different
• Deep dive into user contexts and how they enable isolated tabs
• Writing Python tests using BiDi’s low-level API and what higher-level support will look like
• Running tests in parallel with true isolation, locally and on Selenium Grid
• Performance and resource savings from real examples
• Where Python support currently stands and how you can contribute
This talk is aimed at developers, testers, and DevOps engineers looking to scale Selenium tests smartly in cloud or container-based environments or simply make their local test suite faster.
Hi, I’m Sneha Mavuri, a software engineer and QA specialist with 3 years of experience. I’m currently working at Swiggy, where I focus on ensuring product quality across web, mobile, and backend systems. I work hands-on with tools like Playwright, Appium, WebdriverIO, and Postman to catch bugs early and ensure a smooth experience for users.
Before Swiggy, I worked at CloudDefense.AI, Morgan Stanley, and Wingify, gaining experience across cloud security, backend development, and product testing. This journey has shaped my understanding of how to build products that are not just functional, but reliable and user-focused.
Outside of work, I’m a content creator with a community of over 22,000 followers on LinkedIn, where I share tech insights, career tips, and explain complex tools in simple ways. I enjoy helping others grow and stay curious about how we can use tech in meaningful ways.
Now, I’m channeling all my energy into building something of my own bringing together my skills in engineering, testing, and communication to create products that are smart, useful, and accessible.