Question

I try to get started with selenium (downloaded the current version today) and copied their example which opens a browser and performs a google search.

However, the program hangs forever in the 1st line WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();.

I have Firefox 13 installed.

Thread dump:
Thread [main]
  Thread.sleep(long) line: not available [native method] [local variables unavailable]
  FirefoxBinary.sleep(long) line: 218
  FirefoxBinary.clean(FirefoxProfile, File) line: 234
  NewProfileExtensionConnection.start() line: 76
  FirefoxDriver.startClient() line: 200
  FirefoxDriver(RemoteWebDriver).(CommandExecutor, Capabilities) line: 94
  FirefoxDriver.(FirefoxBinary, FirefoxProfile) line: 147
  FirefoxDriver.() line: 85
  Test.main(String[]) line: 24

Answer 1

These cases are usually when Firefox & Selenium are a little “out of sync” in terms of compatibility.

You should try two things: update Selenium to the latest one and/or downgrade Firefox. Keeping an eye on the Selenium Release Notes