How about a nice game of chess? Pit webdriver supporting user agents against each other.
WebDriverChess starts with SimpleChess a simple client side only in-browser chess game. By default SimpleChess pits the human player against a chess AI. WebDriverChess loads up SimpleChess in two browsers and forwards the AI moves of one to the other as the human move. That is, the human player is used as a proxy for the AI player in the other browser.
WebDriverChess is a node.js script that uses webdriver to automate the two browsers. Browser 1 has the AI as the first player and browser 2 has the AI as the second player. Browser 1's AI moves and WebDriverChess injects script into the browser to catch the move and then inject that as the human player's move in Browser 2. The time the AI gets is fixed so the faster a browser can execute the AI's script, the better that browser will perform in the game.
SimpleChess is a very simple client side JavaScript chess game built out of other JavaScript libraries.
- https://github.com/nmrugg/stockfish.js
- https://github.com/jhlywa/chess.js
- https://github.com/oakmac/chessboardjs/
I got the webdriver executables for Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer, and Edge and ran them all under WebDriverChess against one another. I also got the webdriver executable for Opera, but Opera hangs when running under WebDriverChess so is not included here.
I ran all pairs of browsers in WebDriverChess, each pair 10 times and alternating player 1 and 2.
| Browser | Wins |
|---|---|
| Edge 25.10586 (EdgeHTML 13.10586) | 23 |
| Firefox Nightly 49.0a1 | 21 |
| IE 11.306.10586 | 7 |
| None | 5 |
| Chrome 51.0.2704.79m | 4 |
The AI in SimpleChess is StockFish which is asm.js based. Accordingly the browsers with full asm.js support, Edge and Firefox, have a distinct advantage. Otherwise the amount of time the AI gets is fixed so the faster a browser runs the better it should perform.
I did not expect IE 11 to do better than Chrome but I've rerun several times and get similar results.
None means the match resulted in a draw.
I used the Firefox Nightly build because the normal release build didn't work with their webdriver executable.
The results of the individual matches:
| White | Black | Winner |
|---|---|---|
| chrome | ie | ie |
| chrome | ie | chrome |
| chrome | ie | None |
| chrome | ie | chrome |
| chrome | ie | chrome |
| chrome | edge | edge |
| chrome | edge | edge |
| chrome | edge | edge |
| chrome | edge | edge |
| chrome | edge | edge |
| chrome | firefox | firefox |
| chrome | firefox | None |
| chrome | firefox | None |
| chrome | firefox | firefox |
| chrome | firefox | firefox |
| edge | ie | edge |
| edge | ie | edge |
| edge | ie | edge |
| edge | ie | edge |
| edge | ie | edge |
| edge | chrome | edge |
| edge | chrome | edge |
| edge | chrome | edge |
| edge | chrome | edge |
| edge | chrome | edge |
| edge | firefox | None |
| edge | firefox | firefox |
| edge | firefox | firefox |
| edge | firefox | firefox |
| edge | firefox | edge |
| firefox | ie | firefox |
| firefox | ie | firefox |
| firefox | ie | ie |
| firefox | ie | firefox |
| firefox | ie | firefox |
| firefox | edge | None |
| firefox | edge | edge |
| firefox | edge | firefox |
| firefox | edge | firefox |
| firefox | edge | edge |
| firefox | chrome | chrome |
| firefox | chrome | firefox |
| firefox | chrome | firefox |
| firefox | chrome | firefox |
| firefox | chrome | firefox |
| ie | edge | edge |
| ie | edge | edge |
| ie | edge | edge |
| ie | edge | edge |
| ie | edge | edge |
| ie | chrome | ie |
| ie | chrome | ie |
| ie | chrome | ie |
| ie | chrome | ie |
| ie | chrome | ie |
| ie | firefox | firefox |
| ie | firefox | firefox |
| ie | firefox | firefox |
| ie | firefox | firefox |
| ie | firefox | firefox |