[xarball]

Selenium sets up the browser profile for you, so you can disable images, videos, css, javascript, embeds, all to your heart's content.

I've recently started using Selenium with the privoxy proxy, exactly because browser headless modes are still fairly new tech. They don't all necessarily support all the standard profile features (addons, settings, etc), or behave the same way. It's really neat seeing where they're going, but they sometimes need a bit of help MITM-ing traffic, so that's where a good filter comes in handy.

In the user-facing web world, 'slow' is kind of a relative term. Even with a barebone system, you're nearly always going faster than most servers will put out. I just take my chances bringing in bigger tools, because the personal cost of maintaining an under-equipped tool is usually a greater time-waster to keep up to date as your target site evolves, than the personal cost of waiting for variably-optimized background work to perform its duties.

[chsasank]

Thanks, that was insightful!