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“A Smattering of Selenium #80” is the title of an archived Selenium Project link roundup—not a Selenium version. Its archive entry preserves the line, “I should have learned not to boast about getting caught up with links,” but the linked stories themselves are not available in the archive extract. For current Selenium news, the clearest confirmed release detail is Selenium 4.48, announced August 27, 2026; official pages disagree on what came after it, so check the downloads page for your language binding before upgrading.

What “A Smattering of Selenium #80” refers to

The “#80” identifies an installment in the Selenium Project’s general-post archive, not Selenium 80 or a software release number. The archive preserves the opening line: “I should have learned not to boast about getting caught up with links.” It does not provide the individual roundup stories in the available entry, so their contents cannot be reliably summarized.

Browse Selenium’s official blog and archive for available project posts.

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What’s new in Selenium

Selenium 4.48: the confirmed release highlights

Selenium’s release post dated August 27, 2026, announced version 4.48 for JavaScript, Ruby, Python, .NET, Java, and Grid. The work spans WebDriver BiDi, language bindings, Grid file transfer, and project infrastructure; it is not a single user-facing feature release.

  • WebDriver BiDi: The release continued work on a binding-neutral BiDi layer. JavaScript added connection-level event subscriptions and serialization/domain work.
  • Ruby: Changes included validation for inbound values and a fix for a hang caused by oversized WebSocket frames.
  • .NET: Updates addressed unknown BiDi discriminators and added a media-features emulation command.
  • Python: The notes included capability-construction fixes.
  • Grid: File transfer improvements covered Kubernetes, Docker, and relay sessions.
  • Build and release operations: The project reported weekly flaky-test reporting, alerts for CDP updates landing on trunk, reduced cache churn, honoring DO_NOT_TRACK, weekly dependency updates, and improvements to Java and .NET release reruns.

These details are from the official Selenium 4.48 release announcement.

Which version should you install?

Official version listings do not agree: Selenium’s homepage news block lists 4.49, released September 9, 2026, while the SeleniumHQ GitHub releases listing shows a 4.50.0 entry. This discrepancy does not establish that the products have different version schemes. Before installing or upgrading, use the official Selenium Downloads page to check the release available for your language binding and component.

Which Selenium component fits your task?

Component Best fit
Selenium WebDriver Scripted browser automation and regression testing across environments, using language-specific bindings.
Selenium IDE Quick record-and-playback workflows or reproducing an interaction during exploratory testing.
Selenium Grid Distributing test execution across machines and browser/operating-system combinations.

The Selenium Project describes its core purpose simply: “Selenium automates browsers. That’s it!” For browser tests that need distributed execution, Grid is the relevant component; for a scripted suite, start with the WebDriver binding for your language.

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Related ecosystem and Grid security context

Selenium’s official archive has described Puppeteer adopting WebDriver BiDi support for Chromium and Firefox, an example of the protocol’s wider ecosystem relevance. The archive has also recommended securing Selenium Grid deployments in response to the SeleniumGreed attack. Treat Grid security as an operational requirement: expose Grid only to trusted networks and follow current Selenium security guidance rather than assuming a test service is safe to publish openly.

For screenshot capture rather than browser-driven interaction or regression testing, ScreenshotNeo is a separate website screenshot API and MCP server for developers. It is an alternative to running a browser automation flow when the task is simply to return a page image or PDF.

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