click link selenium web driver works for ie not firefox

Question

I can't for the life of me figure out what is going on. the code is simple:

//WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver();  
//WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
driver.get("http://www.yahoo.com");
driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@id='pa-u_14782488-bd']/a/span[2]")).click();

I use either ff or ie driver. but last 2 line of code is same. works for ie, but not ff. funny thing is i'm getting the xpath from ff firebug so xpath is correct for ff. ff version 7.0.1. Its just the Mail link on the left column of yahoos site. Why is this so hard?

Answer 1

As Slanec mentioned these kind of sites use dynamic id's,so a better option in the above specified case would be to use "title" attribute,which has lesser probability of changing.. if you want to go with xpath,this will work,

driver.findElement(By.xpath("//*[@title='Mail']")).click();

Even better option will be to use link text,because it works the same way as the user manually would click...

driver.findElement(By.linkText("MAIL")).click();