Difference between webdriver.get() and webdriver.navigate()

Question

What is the difference between get() and navigate() methods? Does any of this or maybe another method waits for page content to load? What do I rea

Answer 1

CASE-1

In the below code I navigated to 3 different URLs and when the execution comes to navigate command, it navigated back to facebook home page.

public class FirefoxInvoke {
                @Test
                public static void browserInvoke()
                {
                    System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "gecko-driver-path");
                WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
                System.out.println("Before"+driver.getTitle());
                driver.get("http://www.google.com");
                driver.get("http://www.facebook.com");
                driver.get("http://www.india.com");
                driver.navigate().back();
                driver.quit();
                }

                public static void main(String[] args) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            browserInvoke();
                }

            }

CASE-2:

In below code, I have used navigate() instead of get(), but both the snippets(Case-1 and Case-2) are working exactly the same, just the case-2 execution time is less than of case-1

public class FirefoxInvoke {
                @Test
                public static void browserInvoke()
                {
                    System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "gecko-driver-path");
                WebDriver driver=new FirefoxDriver();
                System.out.println("Before"+driver.getTitle());
                driver.navigate().to("http://www.google.com");
                driver.navigate().to("http://www.facebook.com");
                driver.navigate().to("http://www.india.com");
                driver.navigate().back();
                driver.quit();
                }

                public static void main(String[] args) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
            browserInvoke();
                }

            }

• So the main difference between get() and navigate() is, both are performing the same task but with the use of navigate() you can move back() or forward() in your session's history.
• navigate() is faster than get() because navigate() does not wait for the page to load fully or completely.