

However, a study of browser traffic in 2018 found no preference by malicious actors for headless browsers. Automate web sites in unintended ways e.g.Headless browsers have also been misused in various ways: Google stated in 2009 that using a headless browser could help their search engine index content from websites that use Ajax. Headless browsers are also useful for web scraping. Running automated tests for JavaScript libraries.Test automation in modern web applications ( web testing).The main use cases for headless browsers are:

This made earlier efforts obsolete, notably PhantomJS. Since version 59 of Google Chrome and version 56 of Firefox, there is native support for remote control of the browser. They are particularly useful for testing web pages as they are able to render and understand HTML the same way a browser would, including styling elements such as page layout, colour, font selection and execution of JavaScript and Ajax which are usually not available when using other testing methods. Headless browsers provide automated control of a web page in an environment similar to popular web browsers, but they are executed via a command-line interface or using network communication. Not to be confused with Text-based web browser.Ī headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface.
