title: Not waiting so long for an element
body: <p>I have a table with several rows.  Some of these rows may have a specific element and others may not.  For sure some will and some won't.</p>
  
  <p>I find the row and have it into a WebElement.  Now to see whether an element is there I do the following (assume xp = ".//someelement)</p>
  
  <pre><code> List&lt;WebElement&gt; eles = row.findElements(By.xpath(xp)); 
   if (eles.size() == 0) {
      // element is not there
   } else {
     // element is there
   }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is fine when the element is present.  When it is not, it takes like 30 seconds or a minute to figure out that it is not there.  If called often this can really slow down the test.  I can do</p>
  
  <pre><code> try {
      WebElement ele = row.findElement(by.xpath(xp));
   } catch (Exception ex) {
     // element is not there
   }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>using a more detailed Exception.  This works fine too but same problem.  It waits a minute or half a minute.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to check more quickly whether an element is present or not?  If it were relative to driver (driver.findElementBy()) instead of an element (row.findElementBy()) I think I might know how to do it.</p>
  
  <p>This is Java.</p>