The Android Webview

the android webview niels leenheer - phonegap day eu 2015

what is a webview? a system level component for displaying html in applications

up to android 4.3, the webview was based on webkit android 4.4 and later use a webview based on chromium

the old webkit webview has not been properly updated in the last four years almost no changes between android 4.0 and 4.3

the webkit webview is slow and has outdated standards support its standards support can be compared to ios 4 or 5

the chromium webview is not only much faster, it has much better standards support at the same level or even better standards support as ios 8

the chromium webview will be updated regularly android 4.4 ⟶ chromium 30 android 4.4.3 ⟶ chromium 33 android 5 ⟶ chromium 37 or higher

in a couple of years all android phones will have the chromium webview

but today we still have to deal with the webkit webview 4.4 40% 5 10% 2.2 - 2.3 6% 4.0 5% 4.1 - 4.3 39%

but unfortunately we are not dealing with just one webkit webview

device manufacturers improved the default browser differentiation by having better standards support than your competitors

differentiation is just a pretty name for fragmentation

the reality is that we now have many different webviews that all behave slightly different not only different versions of webkit, but also different features enabled

better standards support is useless if it is only available on a subset of devices apps still need to be build for the lowest common denominator

webgl ? form field types webaudio indexeddb requestanimationframe websockets

having frequent updates is not always good! removing older apis and features can cause legacy apps to break

some devices will never get an upgrade to android 5 chromium 30 and 33 based webviews will be around for the next couple of years

bad performance limited standards support vendor specific versions

better standards support limited control

fragmentation

how to deal with this mess

test as often as possible, on as many devices as possible

perhaps try an open device lab? 144 labs across 34 countries and 4002 devices available

test as often as possible, on as many devices as possible

but there is also another solution

crosswalk

thank you @html5test