When it comes to accessing internet content, we typically use a browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge. You are probably using one of those browsers right now to read this article! While browsers are pretty popular for the whole task of accessing internet content, they hav…

Nice article. Still newbie to web technologies, as I m coming from traditional c++, java background. I am still confused on the basic difference between webview and rendering engines like webkit or blink. Feel like their purpose is one and same. Can you shed some light on that? Thanks in advance. …

They are similar. The rendering engine is primarily interested in painting pixels based on whatever HTML/CSS/JS it is dealing with. The WebView is the frame surrounding the rendering engine, and it comes with its own APIs to allow whatever app container it is in (could be Electron, WPF, etc. app) to…

[image] kirupa: (could be Electron, WPF, etc. app) Do you have or know of a comprehensive list of these?

I don’t, but I would venture every major app framework in existence today will provide support for a webview. Even if it didn’t, you can roll your own webview with only some effort :tractor:

Riiiight. I was just curious if you knew of something cool that I didn’t already. :wink:

Thanks for writing this article! In it, it seems like you use the term ‘WebViews’ very broadly, encompassing ‘traditional webviews’ and ‘integrated in-app browsers’. Would you be able to share some information about how you view the differences between these types of ‘webviews’? Are both types still…

In-app browsers are just WebViews. Where a WebView contains no UI, the IIAB contains your typical address bar, buttons, and related UI that makes the WebView more usable as a browser. Does this help? :slight_smile:

Thanks for the reply… I thought the IIAB is preferred not only because of the built in browser UI but also because of security reasons. I don’t do any native mobile development, but when I was researching a little bit into this area I came across another article: https://www.addthis.com/blog/2017/0…

You can customize the behavior of a WebView to be more secure by enforcing HTTPS only navigation, blocking cookies, etc. Many in-app browsers prepackage some of these customizations “for free”. There are many reasons why platforms encourage in-app browsers over WebViews. For navigating to various U…

Understanding WebViews

programming

rampar January 29, 2020, 10:15pm 15

Thanks for helping out on this.

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Understanding WebViews

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