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Selenium Navigation and Page Interaction


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Valentina Skakun

This is the second post in series about scraping with Selenium in Python.
In this one, you’ll learn how to move between pages, handle tabs and pop-ups, fill forms, scroll, and even run JavaScript.

Table of Contents

  1. Step 1: Navigate Between Pages
  2. Step 2: Work with Tabs and Pop-ups
  3. Step 3: Perform Clicks, Form Fills, and Keyboard Actions
  4. Step 4: Scroll and Load More Content
  5. Step 5: Execute JavaScript

Step 1: Navigate Between Pages

You can control the browser flow with a few simple commands.

driver.get("https://example.com")     # Open a page
driver.refresh()                      # Reload it
driver.back()                         # Go to the previous page
driver.forward()                      # Move forward again

That’s all you need to move around.

Step 2: Work with Tabs and Pop-ups

Modern websites love to open new tabs and alerts. You can switch between them:

# Get all open window handles
windows = driver.window_handles  

# Switch to the second tab
driver.switch_to.window(windows[1])

# Close it and go back to the first one
driver.close()
driver.switch_to.window(windows[0])

To handle alerts:

alert = driver.switch_to.alert
print(alert.text)
alert.accept()  # or alert.dismiss()

Step 3: Perform Clicks, Form Fills, and Keyboard Actions

The basics of interaction: clicks, inputs, and keyboard actions.

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

driver.find_element(By.ID, "search").send_keys("Selenium" + Keys.ENTER)
driver.find_element(By.CSS_SELECTOR, ".submit-btn").click()

Keep your locators simple, CSS selectors are usually enough.

Step 4: Scroll and Load More Content

Dynamic pages often load content as you scroll. Here’s a quick way to simulate user scrolling:

import time

last_height = driver.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")

while True:
    driver.execute_script("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight);")
    time.sleep(2)  # Wait for new content to load
    new_height = driver.execute_script("return document.body.scrollHeight")
    if new_height == last_height:
        break
    last_height = new_height

This pattern works great for infinite scroll pages.

Step 5: Execute JavaScript

In Selenium 4.36+, Chrome and Edge use the new BiDi (Bidirectional) protocol.
You can still run custom JavaScript like this:

driver.execute_script("console.log('Running JS from Python');")
result = driver.execute_script("return document.title;")

BiDi also lets you capture logs and network data.

Final Notes

In the next article, we’ll cover locating elements, reading text, handling the Shadow DOM, and exporting your results.
Meanwhile, here are some useful resources:


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Valentina Skakun