Playwright adoption guide: Overview, examples, and alternatives

Playwright, developed by Microsoft, is a leading browser automation framework designed for end-to-end testing across modern web applications, supporting multiple programming languages such as JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, and .NET. Initially released in 2020, Playwright was created by engineers who previously worked on Google’s Puppeteer, leading to a more flexible and robust tool capable of automating tests across all major browsers, including Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit. The framework offers a rich API for web interactions, automatic waiting for elements, network mocking, and device emulation, making it suitable for various use cases like web scraping and automated testing. Although it boasts features like cross-browser support, parallelism, and CI/CD integrations, Playwright has some limitations, such as a steep learning curve and the lack of official plugin support. Despite these, its extensive community, detailed documentation, and capabilities have contributed to its rapid adoption and continued evolution in the browser automation landscape.