Fyrd
Add WebView Browser support for various OS
More and more web developers nowadays are going to build desktop apps with the web techstack. It would be really handy to see supported Web APIs inbetween the different WebViews, talking WKWebView for MacOS, IWebBrowser2 and WebViewControl for WIN, WebKitWebView for Linux and so on
Who is gonna fill the data manually for all those webviews? Seems like a lot of human resources for what is a massive duplication. The default webview of an OS always resolve to the default browser of the OS (webkit for Ithings), chromium Edge for Windows products.
Sure there can be minor differences between what a webview allow and what the default browser allow, this is at least the case on Android. I had found a way at the time to find all the missing features on android webview vs chrome browser (don't remember how) and the list was ridiculously small, like ~5 features among thousands where missing vs chrome, and among those 5 ~3 made sense to avoid because they were irrelevant for web views. Among the other 2, I commented on chromium tickets and progress has been made in recent years regarding parity.
What i mean is: what matters is to show the difference between a webview and its respective browser by showing its very few missing features/behavioral differences and its additional features (probably none) Such an UX might need a special dedicated page on caniuse.
@LifeIsStrange
What i mean is: what matters is to show the difference between a webview and its respective browser by showing its very few missing features/behavioral differences and its additional features (probably none) Such an UX might need a special dedicated page on caniuse.
Yeah, that is probably a really good suggestion.
A notable missing feature is the web payment APIs https://chromestatus.com/feature/5639348045217792 (as you can see the platform webview is missing)
So I have found a way to find the exhaustive difference: On the search bar of chromestatus.com Type browsers.chrome.webview<98 It will list all features since version 0 to 98 Then type the other similar search query for Chrome Android (non webview)
Then apply a dom selector on the console to count the total number, substract them and you got the total diff number. An elaborate selector could filter the elements that differ.
There has been some movement on this in mdn browser compat data.
Relevant links:
- webview community group: https://github.com/WebView-CG
- mdn adding data for
webview_ios: https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/pull/23747 - list of browsers showing
webview_iosandwebview_android: https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/tree/main/browsers
Can the mdn data be used to add support for these in caniuse?
