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I would like to have the following functions to be implemented in Selenium3: 1. Ability to open any tabs in the opened browser by webdriver. 2. Ability to select any of the opened tabs from the opened browser by webdriver. 3. Ability to perform any of the actions on any of the tabs that could have a normal browser window. The reason to asking this because sometimes you have a test execution flow which requires to do some actions a bit outside of the current context. For an example: You are shopping for something. Your items are place in your basket. You have the possibility to signup on the basket. You receive a confirmation email. As a normal use case driven by a user it will open the same browsers window in a new tab. Check some texts. Close the Tab, Continue with the checkout. This is one simple example. Raising the issue for the specification of: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webdriver/raw-file/tip/webdriver-spec.html
The same can be performed with windows instead of tabs. To prove the need for tabs you have to provide a use case that can't be replaces with a similar scenario where all "tab" words are replaced with "window" word without losing the functionality or sense.
I believe this is already described in https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webdriver/raw-file/tip/webdriver-spec.html#widl-WebDriver-getWindowHandles-sequence-DOMString. Once we have the windowHandles then the UA just needs to switch it and they should be seemless.
Closing this for the reasons barancev and AutomatedTester gave.