Style guide for Selenium documentation

Read our contributing documentation for complete instructions on how to add content to this documentation.

Alerts

Alerts have been added to direct potential contributors to where specific content is missing.

{{< alert-content />}}

or

{{< alert-content >}}
Additional information about what specific content is needed
{{< /alert-content >}}

Which gets displayed like this:

Capitalization of titles

Our documentation uses Title Capitalization for linkTitle which should be short and Sentence capitalization for title which can be longer and more descriptive. For example, a linkTitle of Special Heading might have a title of The importance of a special heading in documentation

Line length

When editing the documentation’s source, which is written in plain HTML, limit your line lengths to around 100 characters.

Some of us take this one step further and use what is called semantic linefeeds, which is a technique whereby the HTML source lines, which are not read by the public, are split at ‘natural breaks’ in the prose. In other words, sentences are split at natural breaks between clauses. Instead of fussing with the lines of each paragraph so that they all end near the right margin, linefeeds can be added anywhere that there is a break between ideas.

This can make diffs very easy to read when collaborating through git, but it is not something we enforce contributors to use.

Translations

Selenium now has official translators for each of the supported languages.

• If you add a code example to the important_documentation.en.md file, also add it to important_documentation.ja.md, important_documentation.pt-br.md, important_documentation.zh-cn.md.
• If you make text changes in the English version, just make a Pull Request. The new process is for issues to be created and tagged as needs translation based on changes made in a given PR.

Code examples

All references to code should be language independent, and the code itself should be placed inside code tabs.

Default Code Tabs

The Docsy code tabs look like this:

• Java
• Python
• CSharp
• Ruby
• JavaScript
• Kotlin

    WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
  

    driver = webdriver.Chrome()
  

    var driver = new ChromeDriver();
  

    driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome
  

    let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();
  

    val driver = ChromeDriver()
  

To generate the above tabs, this is what you need to write. Note that the tabpane includes langEqualsHeader=true. This auto-formats the code in each tab to match the header name, and ensures that all tabs on the page with a language are set to the same thing.

{{< tabpane langEqualsHeader=true >}}
  {{< tab header="Java" >}}
    WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
  {{< /tab >}}
  {{< tab header="Python" >}}
    driver = webdriver.Chrome()
  {{< /tab >}}
  {{< tab header="CSharp" >}}
    var driver = new ChromeDriver();
  {{< /tab >}}
  {{< tab header="Ruby" >}}
    driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome
  {{< /tab >}}
  {{< tab header="JavaScript" >}}
    let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').build();
  {{< /tab >}}
  {{< tab header="Kotlin" >}}
    val driver = ChromeDriver()
  {{< /tab >}}
{{< /tabpane >}}

Reference GitHub Examples

To ensure that all code is kept up to date, our goal is to write the code in the repo where it can be executed when Selenium versions are updated to ensure that everything is correct.

All code examples to be in our example directories.

This code can be automatically displayed in the documentation using the gh-codeblock shortcode. The shortcode automatically generates its own html, so we do not want it to auto-format with the language header. If all tabs are using this shortcode, set text=true in the tabpane and remove langEqualsHeader=true. If only some tabs are using this shortcode, keep langEqualsHeader=true in the tabpane and add text=true to the tab. Note that the gh-codeblock line can not be indented at all.

One great thing about using gh-codeblock is that it adds a link to the full example. This means you don’t have to include any additional context code, just the line(s) that are needed, and the user can navigate to the repo to see how to use it.

A basic comparison of code looks like:

{{< tabpane text=true >}}
{{< tab header="Java" >}}
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/java/src/test/java/dev/selenium/getting_started/FirstScript.java#L46-L47" >}}
{{< /tab >}}
{{< tab header="Python" >}}
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/python/tests/getting_started/first_script.py#L17-L18" >}}
{{< /tab >}}
{{< tab header="CSharp" >}}
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/dotnet/SeleniumDocs/GettingStarted/FirstScript.cs#L39-L40" >}}
{{< /tab >}}
{{< tab header="Ruby" >}}
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/ruby/spec/getting_started/first_script.rb#L16-L17" >}}
{{< /tab >}}
{{< tab header="JavaScript" >}}
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/javascript/test/getting_started/firstScript.spec.js#L23-L24" >}}
{{< /tab >}}
{{< tab header="Kotlin" >}}
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/kotlin/src/test/kotlin/dev/selenium/getting_started/FirstScriptTest.kt#L25-L26" >}}
{{< /tab >}}
{{< /tabpane >}}

Which looks like this:

• Java
• Python
• CSharp
• Ruby
• JavaScript
• Kotlin

message = driver.find_element(by=By.ID, value="message")

message = driver.find_element(id: 'message')

    let value = await message.getText();
    assert.equal("Received!", value);

        var textBox = driver.findElement(By.name("my-text"))
        val submitButton = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("button"))

Using Markdown in a Tab

If you want your example to include something other than code (default) or html (from gh-codeblock), you need to first set text=true, then change the Hugo syntax for the tabto use % instead of < and > with curly braces:

{{< tabpane text=true >}}
{{% tab header="Java" %}}
1. Start the driver
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/java/src/test/java/dev/selenium/getting_started/FirstScript.java#L12" >}}
2. Navigate to a page
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/java/src/test/java/dev/selenium/getting_started/FirstScript.java#L14" >}}
3. Quit the driver
{{< gh-codeblock path="examples/java/src/test/java/dev/selenium/getting_started/FirstScript.java#L29" >}}
{{% /tab %}}
< ... >
{{< /tabpane >}}

This produces:

• Java

        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

        driver.get("https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/web/web-form.html");

        driver.quit();

This is preferred to writing code comments because those will not be translated. Only include the code that is needed for the documentation, and avoid over-explaining. Finally, remember not to indent plain text or it will rendered as a codeblock.