The Selenium driver class is the "engine" that controls the browser or mobile device under test. It determines which driver type to create, the look and feel of the driver, the default preferences, multithreading capabilities, settings, and whether to run the test locally or on the Selenium grid. It is a self-contained singleton class that creates one instance of the driver that is used throughout the entire test run. All session parameters are retrievable throughout the run, and they can be tracked to allow multiple drivers to run concurrently, in a browser-to-mobile test, or in a parallel/distributed environment.

As we progress through the framework components, users will see how important this class becomes to the integrity of the test. We will start by designing and building utility classes to support the framework.