Dear Developers,

I would request an extension of the communication protocol between the Selenium Server and the browser, so that upstream communication would contain a timestamp for the relevant point of the proceedings:

When a command is sent to the browser, it should get the actual browser timestamp just before processing the command and the timestamp of the completion, and return both.

All such timestamps should be according to the browser machine's own clock, measured nearest to the actual proceeding, so it can be used for measuring the time it takes to process an action (typically pressing a button, navigating, etc.).

All such timestamps should be returned to the Selenium RC Client code, for example in a return value, or filled into an additional API method parameter object, or all browser response HTTP request parameters could be fed back to the RC Client API method return parameters in a Map in a APICallResult object.

This would make it possible to use the browser opened by the Selenium Server as a performance test tool virtual user. Unfortunately measuring time in the Selenium RC Client has a way too high performance overhead, so the times measured there are absolutely unusable.

If it can not be scheduled for a soon coming release, please indicate some starting points on where I can find the relevant Javascript files handling the commands from the Selenium server, and I would probably be able and willing to code this as a contribution.

Best regards,

Robert Varga