In the previous version of Selenium, which is Selenium RC (Remote Control), it is mandatory that you need to run the selenium-server-standalone.jar jar file, which acts as a server. Selenium RC will then use this server to establish the communication channel between the browser and the code. In addition, this jar file contains all the library functions that will be used in our code.
But in a later version of Selenium, which is Selenium WebDriver, there is no need to run this jar file, as the WebDriver api will directly communicate with the native language of the browser. So this jar file is replaced with selenium-java.jar jar files
Hope this helps.
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