Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Playwright VS Closure Compiler

Compare Playwright VS Closure Compiler and see what are their differences

Playwright logo Playwright

Playwright is automation software for Chromium, Firefox, Webkit using the Node.js library having a single API in place.

Closure Compiler logo Closure Compiler

The Closure Compiler is a tool for making JavaScript download and run faster.
  • Playwright Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-22
  • Closure Compiler Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-23

Playwright features and specs

  • Cross-Browser Testing
    Playwright supports testing on Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, providing comprehensive coverage across different browsers, thus ensuring greater compatibility and a wider test reach.
  • Auto-Wait Mechanism
    Playwright automatically waits for elements to be actionable before performing interactions, reducing the need for explicit wait commands and helping to make tests more reliable and less flaky.
  • Headless Testing
    Playwright supports headless mode for all browsers, which allows for faster test execution and reduced resource consumption, making it ideal for continuous integration systems.
  • Context Isolation
    Playwright introduces the concept of browser contexts, which allows for isolated execution environments within a single browser instance. This enables parallel testing with reduced overhead.
  • Extensive API
    Playwright offers a wide range of APIs that cover user interactions, network interception, and browser automation, providing developers with powerful tools to create robust tests.
  • Network Interception
    Playwright can intercept and modify network requests and responses, allowing for advanced testing scenarios such as mocking APIs and simulating different network conditions.
  • Strong Documentation
    Playwright provides thorough and detailed documentation, making it easier for developers to learn and effectively utilize the framework.
  • Rich Debugging Features
    The framework includes features like verbose logging and debugging capabilities, which facilitate easier troubleshooting and quicker resolution of issues.
  • Support for Multiple Languages
    Playwright supports multiple programming languages, including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C#, and Java, offering flexibility to developers based on their preference.
  • Community and Support
    The Playwright project has an active community and regular updates, ensuring continuous improvement and access to support from both the community and the development team.

Possible disadvantages of Playwright

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive capabilities and API, Playwright might have a steeper learning curve for beginners compared to some simpler testing tools.
  • Performance Overhead
    While Playwright aims to be efficient, its feature-rich nature can sometimes introduce performance overhead, particularly for complex test suites.
  • Evolving Ecosystem
    The relatively rapid development and updates can occasionally lead to breaking changes, requiring teams to frequently update their test scripts.
  • Less Mature Ecosystem
    Compared to more established tools like Selenium, Playwright's ecosystem is still maturing, which may result in fewer third-party plugins and integrations.
  • Limited Browser Versions
    Playwright's focus on modern browsers and web standards might make it difficult to test older browser versions or niche browsers, potentially limiting test coverage for legacy systems.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running multiple browser contexts and handling extensive network interception can be resource-intensive, requiring more powerful hardware or cloud resources for large test suites.

Closure Compiler features and specs

  • Advanced Optimizations
    Closure Compiler can perform aggressive optimization techniques that result in highly efficient and smaller JavaScript code. This improves load times and performance for web applications.
  • Code Minification
    The compiler reduces the size of JavaScript files by removing unnecessary whitespace, comments, and shortening variable names, which helps in reducing bandwidth usage and enhancing page load speed.
  • Dead Code Elimination
    Closure Compiler can analyze JavaScript code to eliminate dead code, which is code that is never executed or used, resulting in a cleaner and more efficient codebase.
  • Code Warnings and Checks
    It provides developers with advanced code warnings and type checking to identify potential errors, helping improve code quality and reduce bugs.
  • Cross-Browser Compatibility
    Closure Compiler can help ensure that JavaScript code behaves consistently across different browsers by transforming it into a format that's compatible with a wider range of environments.

Possible disadvantages of Closure Compiler

  • Complex Setup
    Getting started with Closure Compiler can be complex, especially for developers who are not familiar with its configuration and setup requirements.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a learning curve associated with understanding how to use the tool effectively, particularly when using advanced optimization features.
  • Debugging Challenges
    Minified and optimized code can be difficult to debug because variable names and function names are often changed to something less human-readable.
  • Integration Limitations
    Integrating Closure Compiler into existing build systems or workflows might require additional effort and adjustments, particularly if those systems are not designed to accommodate complex build tools.
  • Dependency Management
    Closure Compiler requires careful management of JavaScript dependencies, which can be cumbersome in large projects or projects lacking modular architecture.

Analysis of Playwright

Overall verdict

  • Playwright is a strong choice for browser automation and end-to-end testing due to its reliability, cross-browser support, and extensive features designed to improve test effectiveness and developer productivity.

Why this product is good

  • Playwright is considered good because it provides end-to-end testing capabilities across multiple browsers (Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit) with a single API. It supports multiple languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, C#, and Java, making it versatile for different developer preferences. It offers headless and headed execution, robust automation capabilities, and improved speed and reliability over other testing frameworks. Additionally, Playwright's features like auto-wait, tracing, and capturing screenshots/videos of test runs make debugging easier.

Recommended for

  • Developers seeking cross-browser automated testing solutions
  • Teams working with multiple programming languages who require versatile testing tools
  • Projects requiring reliable, end-to-end testing capabilities
  • Organizations looking to integrate testing with CI/CD pipelines
  • Developers needing advanced debugging and tracing tools for tests

Playwright videos

Generate tests in VS Code

More videos:

  • Review - Playwright Brittany K. Allen wins 2021 Georgia Engel Comedy Playwriting Prize

Closure Compiler videos

Kevin Macdonald - How Closure Compiler can help protect your IP

More videos:

  • Review - Ильяс Кабиров — Google Closure Compiler — принцип работы и использование в современном фронтенде

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Playwright and Closure Compiler)
Development
100 100%
0% 0
Web Application Bundler
0 0%
100% 100
Automated Testing
100 100%
0% 0
Tool
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Playwright and Closure Compiler

Playwright Reviews

Top Selenium Alternatives
Playwright offers a modern approach with auto-wait APIs and more native support for modern web features compared to Selenium's more manual and broad approach. While Selenium requires explicit waits and has a broader language support, Playwright focuses on simplifying cross-browser testing with its unified API and auto-wait features, which might reduce setup and test...
Source: bugbug.io
Top 5 Selenium Alternatives for Less Maintenance
Appium and Playwright closely resemble Selenium in terms of functionality but offer unique features and advantages. Both of these solutions require coding experience. Leapwork, a commercial vendor, uses Selenium under the hood to power their visual automation approach.
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Playwright, a Node.js library created by Microsoft, is considered one of the best JavaScript frameworks for testing. It automates Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API. Developers building JavaScript code can use these APIs to build new browser pages, go to URLs, and interact with page elements. Additionally, Playwright can automate Microsoft Edge since it is based...

Closure Compiler Reviews

We have no reviews of Closure Compiler yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Playwright seems to be a lot more popular than Closure Compiler. While we know about 282 links to Playwright, we've tracked only 10 mentions of Closure Compiler. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Playwright mentions (282)

  • Show HN: Quell – AI QA Agent Working Across Linear, Vercel, Jira, Netlify, Figma
    This is pretty cool - the Jira/Linear integration could save a ton of manual work. How do you handle test data setup and teardown? That's usually where these workflows get messy. For alternatives in this space, there's qawolf (https://qawolf.com) for similar automated testing workflows, or I'm actually building bug0 (https://bug0.com) which also does AI-powered test automation, still in beta. For the more... - Source: Hacker News / 16 days ago
  • Data Broken - Opt out of the data broker nightmare with Privotron and Amazon Q Developer
    Privotron is built on a modern Python stack that leverages several powerful libraries for browser automation and configuration management. At its core, the application uses Playwright, a robust browser automation framework that provides cross-browser support and reliable DOM interaction capabilities. The command-line interface is implemented using Click, which enables sophisticated argument parsing and validation... - Source: dev.to / 29 days ago
  • CI/CD guide: store Playwright test results in AWS S3
    In my job, I've encountered a tool called Playwright for this purpose and was greatly impressed by its capabilities. You can program it to do all the things you do manually -- and run them automatically without needing to open a browser. It's no wonder someone took the time to transform such bloatware as a modern browser into something more automation-friendly. Amazing! - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Design Pattern for Playwright End-to-End Testing
    This article introduces a design pattern for end-to-end testing using Playwright. This pattern is an extension of the Page Object Model, aimed at improving test code readability and reducing the increase in code volume when adding more test scenarios or test data variations. This pattern is adopted by SVQK. A working implementation example and its test results are available in the following repositories:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Why the Python Standard Library Needs a run_sync()
    I recently updated a small script I wrote to automate file uploads to a website with no API. It uses the excellent Playwright project to drive a browser - making the tedious task of filling out forms painless. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
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Closure Compiler mentions (10)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Playwright and Closure Compiler, you can also consider the following products

puppeteer - Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium...

JavaScript Obfuscator - JavaScript Obfuscator is a free online tool that obfuscates your source code, preventing it from being stolen and used without permission.

Selenium - Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that.

Terser - JavaScript parser, mangler, optimizer and beautifier toolkit for ES6+

BrowserCat - Easy, fast, and reliable browser automation and headless browser APIs. The web is messy, but your code shouldn't be.

UglifyJS - JavaScript minifier, beautifier, mangler and parser toolkit.