Possible issue with Chromedriver 78, Selenium can not find web element of PDF opened in Chrome

Mix :

Until my google Chrome wasn't updated to version 78 my code worked fine. I also updated the chromedriver to version 78.0.3904.70. So I am not able anymore to find WebElement with id='plugin' using Selenium WebDriver and Java:

<html>
<div id="content">
<embed id="plugin" type="application/x-google-chrome-pdf" src="http://??????????/offer_printed.php?printable=yes&amp;reanudar=&amp;>
</div>
</html>

Other than that part my tests are working fine. I never had a similar issue before. I also tried to find WebElement id='content' but I am receiving the same error.

WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait (driver, 90);
WebElement scrollvalid = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("plugin")));

scrollvalid.sendKeys(Keys.PAGE_DOWN);                       scrollvalid.sendKeys(Keys.PAGE_DOWN);

My automation script should find the PDF element and scroll the page down. Instead, I am receiving this error: org.openqa.selenium.TimeoutException: Timed out after 90 seconds waiting for visibility of element located by By.id: plugin

Is anybody facing a similar issue? Thanks in advance.

wdtj :

I've run into the same issue.

Apparently Chrome automatically updates itself. Yesterday (Oct 29 '19) My ChromeDriver started complaining that it was not compatible with Chrome 78. I updated the driver to the 78 version. I started to get random org.openqa.selenium.NoSuchElementException exceptions when trying to find elements that I confirmed were there. The findElement[s] also work when I used breakpoints. I also tried implicit waits, with only limited success.

I tried zsbappa's ChromeOption solution but no joy.

Google makes it hard to get old versions of Chrome, but I found version 76 at https://www.neowin.net/news/google-chrome-76-offline-installer/. Beware, the online installer installs the latest version. I reverted to the driver for 76 and all is good. All my Selenium tests are working again.

My conclusion is that the Chrome 78 and it's associated driver has a race condition where Selenium attempts to interrogate the web page before it's complete.