Headless browser

A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface.

Headless browsers provide automated control of a web page in an environment similar to popular web browsers, but are executed via a command-line interface or using network communication. 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.[1][2]

Use cases

Headless browsers are used for:[3][4]

Google stated in 2009 that using a headless browser could help their search engine index content from websites that use AJAX.[5]

Malicious

Headless browsers can also be used to:

List of headless browsers

This is a list of browsers providing a complete or near-complete headless implementation.

Simulated

These are browsers that simulate a browser environment. While they are able to support common browser features (HTML parsing, cookies, XHR, some javascript, etc.), they do not render DOM and have limited support for DOM events. They usually perform faster than full browsers, but are unable to correctly interpret many popular websites.[20][21][22]

Scriptable

These are browsers that may still require a user Interface but have programmatic APIs and are intended to be used in ways similar to traditional headless browsers.

See also

References

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