How to open a new tab with Selenium

Until recently, you could open a new tab via window.open when using execute_script in Selenium tests. It no longer works in Chrome (will show a "popup blocked" notification).

This is because browsers usually block window.open unless the user interacted with an element for security reasons. I am not sure why it did work via Selenium before.

Here is an approach that will insert a link into the page, and have Selenium click it:

path = "/your/path/here"
id = "helper_#{SecureRandom.hex(8)}"
execute_script <<-JAVASCRIPT
  var $helper = $('<a>').attr({ href: #{path.to_json}, id: #{id.to_json}, target: '_blank' });
  $helper.prependTo('body').text('click me').css({ zIndex: 9999, position: 'absolute' });
  setTimeout(function() { $helper.remove() }, 1000);
JAVASCRIPT
find("##{id}").click

Note that the link tag is removed after 1 second. You may or may not want to keep this.