Which is better CSS or Xpath Considering performance and cross browser testing

Question

I was using Selenium for my web application for the testing the page content. For this which is better according to performance & which supports all the browsers (i.e. IE 7,8,9, FF, Chrome etc).

Answer 1

According to css has better performance compared to xpath and it is well documented in Selenium community. Here are some reasons,

• Xpath engines are different in each browser, hence make them inconsistent
• IE does not have a native xpath engine, therefore selenium injects its own xpath engine for compatibility of its API. Hence we lose the advantage of using native browser features that WebDriver inherently promotes.
• Xpath tend to become complex and hence make hard to read in my opinion

In case of searching for a parent element or searching element by its text xpath would be preferred.