07:01:43 RRSAgent has joined #webview 07:01:43 logging to https://www.w3.org/2022/05/11-webview-irc 07:02:29 QingAn has joined #webview 07:02:36 Present+ Brady_Duga, Rayan_Kanso, Jiasheng_Wu, Qing_An, DomHM 07:02:39 cpn has joined #webview 07:02:44 duga has joined #webview 07:02:57 present+ tomayac 07:03:04 Present+ Thomas_Steiner, Martin_Alavarez 07:03:05 present+ duga 07:03:21 martin has joined #webview 07:03:23 Zakim has joined #webview 07:03:46 Agenda: https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/blob/main/meetings/2nd-meeting-agenda-220511.md#second-meeting-agenda-2022-05-11 07:03:55 Chair: Rayan, Qing 07:04:11 present+ martin 07:06:17 Topic: -> https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22use+case%22 Review and discuss use cases 07:06:44 present+ Chris_Needham 07:06:46 Subtopic: -> https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/3 Load a WebView page #3 07:07:17 QingAn: the browser provides prefetch, load and next as resource hints to optimize the load of associated resources 07:07:21 ... but webviews don't support this 07:08:07 ... allowing prefetching data in JSON and XML would be beneficial e.g. in an ecommerce site to preload product info 07:08:18 ... this helps improve the UX 07:09:35 ... this got support from Bytedance, with a suggestion of providing prefetch capabilities 07:09:50 ... but this converged to providing in the Web Platform in general rather than for WebView specifically 07:10:29 q+ 07:10:30 q+ 07:10:31 q- 07:10:31 ... We should discuss whether this is a valid use case 07:10:34 q? 07:11:15 duga: Brady Duga, at Google but not representing WebView, coming from the ePUB WG, representing digital publishing 07:11:50 ... This is a very important use case for us - reading ebooks on Android and iOS happen mostly on WebView, but end users don't expect a load-the-web-page experience in that context 07:12:05 ... we need very nice transitions when moving from one book page to the next 07:12:34 ... this requries non amount of trivial work needed, e.g. to use CSS animations 07:12:42 ... preloading pages performance is incredibly important for us 07:12:50 ... so definitely a valid use case 07:13:48 Qing: similar need from the mini-app perspective 07:14:57 q+ rayan 07:15:00 ack duga 07:15:00 q? 07:15:31 rayan: this is all for on-device data, not fetched - so more pre-rendering rather than pre-fetching? 07:15:59 brady: fonts may take a while to load from storage; we don't want to show the page in the wrong font 07:16:06 q? 07:16:07 ... some preloading, but pre-rendering is the most important for us 07:16:11 ack rayan 07:16:48 Qing: rough consensus that this is a valid use case; I'll keep the issue opened to gather more comments 07:17:01 ... we should bring it to the document 07:17:25 q? 07:17:34 Rayan: is there a need specific to native re prefetching? or would bringing this to the Web platform be the right approach? 07:17:41 q+ jiasheng 07:17:51 q+ 07:19:34 Qing: summarizing what I understood from jiasheng - an ecommerce app cannot pre-load all pages, since the user can view any product 07:20:05 ... with a traditional webview, when the user opens a new product page, the webview will fetch html and css which causes delay instead of using native to render the page 07:20:57 ... if the webview could prefetch with the native app predicting the most likely-to-be-requested page based on the user's profile 07:21:34 ... it could prefetch the said page beforehand, and if the user does request it, it would provide a very good performance 07:21:52 jiasheng: +1 - loading results from local cache is faster than from network 07:22:20 rayan: so the native side decides what pages to download and cache them in webviews 07:22:31 ... this could still be done from the WebView? 07:23:10 ... using Web Platform features 07:23:27 q? 07:23:39 ack jiasheng 07:23:46 ack jiasheng 07:23:54 ack dom 07:24:11 ... it's better if we expose features in Web Platform when we can 07:24:33 qing: +1 07:24:52 q? 07:25:22 Topic: -> https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/4 Build opinionated web browsers #4 07:25:47 tomayac: there is a desire from companies like DuckDuckGo to push a particular approach to Web browsing 07:26:44 ... e.g. DDG browser blocking trackers and removing cookie banners when possible 07:27:05 ... to that end, they inject a number of user scripts, either custom built or imported 07:28:05 q+ 07:28:13 ... right now this is exposed via developer tools 07:28:37 QingAn: is it common for browsers to use WebView to display pages? 07:29:32 Tomayac: BA share code between their native app & browser, with a user script removing the header / footer in their native app 07:30:07 ... I noticed by accident when finding the same bug in both 07:30:58 ... a core differentiation is that a browser can load any URL 07:31:27 QingAn: what would be needed to support this use case? either from the webview or native side? 07:32:16 tomayac: some users may not be happy with some of the opiniated scripts - that may a very advanced use case 07:32:36 ... from the group perspective, maybe this is mostly about acknowledging that webviews *are* used to build browsers 07:33:07 ... on iOS, using a webview is even the only approach 07:34:00 ... the DDG browser chose to also take this approach on Mac, possibly as a way to re-use their iOS work 07:34:11 q? 07:34:21 ack QingAn 07:36:57 QingAn: who are the stakeholders for this use case who could join the discussion? 07:37:13 tomayac: I'm not sure who the right contacts at DDG would be 07:37:16 q+ 07:38:22 dom: I can reach out to them 07:39:37 Subtopic: -> https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/6 Publishing apps using web technologies #6 07:40:18 QingAn: feels like a compilation of several use cases, with a request to support from APIs from the Web Platform 07:40:36 ... as well as customizing permissions, and communications between WebView & Native 07:40:43 s/Topic:/Subtopic:/ 07:40:51 ... I'll try to dig more into the latter 07:41:04 ... there are private solutions in different platforms 07:41:15 q? 07:41:18 q- 07:41:53 Subtopic: -> https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/9 Optional network interception capability in WebView 07:43:57 jiasheng: [presenting the use case] 07:45:02 ... Android has shouldInterceptRequest to help with this, but no equivalent in WKWebView 07:45:03 q? 07:46:04 ... it would be great to see that capability expanded to other webviews 07:46:19 q+ 07:47:04 QingAn: should we accept this as a valid use case? 07:47:05 q+ 07:47:11 ack me 07:47:19 ack QingAn 07:47:42 Rayan: are there any valid use case for intercepting 3rd-party network requests, ie domains not owned by the application? 07:48:10 q+ 07:48:34 QingAn: this issue describes first-party requests, but doesn't say whether this would also apply to 3rd party as well 07:48:37 q+ 07:50:00 jiasheng: there are scenarios where it would also be useful for 3rd parties e.g. to accelerate loading performance of 3rd party content 07:50:10 QingAn: please describe these in the github issue 07:50:42 brady: from a digital publishing perspective, there are times where we want to intercept 3rd party requests 07:50:54 ... e.g. when loading a video 07:51:26 ... for privacy and performance reason, they might be locally cached to avoid pinging the hosting Web site 07:51:44 q? 07:51:48 ack duga 07:52:03 rayan: intercepting 1st and 3rd parties network requests have very different constraints 07:52:19 ... Service Workers can do the former in the Web Platform context 07:52:27 q? 07:54:16 dom: interesting that this is available in one platform (android), but not another (ios) - we should look how broadly that feature is available across all webviews 07:54:48 ... also interesting to see if we handle this as a single use case for 1st/3rd party resources, or if handling them separately will help explore the solution space 07:55:05 QingAn: let's keep discussing this issue 07:55:43 rayan: I think distinguishing 1st party/3rd party use case will likely help, but it's probably too early yet to split the use case 07:56:11 Qing: let's continue discussion on the remaining use cases on github & in our next call 07:56:39 Topic: Kick off the use cases and limitations report draft 07:57:47 -> https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/blob/main/index.html Template document for use case 07:57:56 QingAn: will start populating this with use cases 07:58:38 Topic: TPAC 2022 07:58:57 QingAn: CGs are invited to organize meetings at TPAC 2022 07:59:15 ... are you all planning to attend TPAC physically? 08:00:02 Attending 08:00:18 Rayan: we should probably survey the group to get a sense of who might be there 08:00:57 QingAn: any immediate preference on the day for our meeting? 08:02:14 dom: we should probably collect info on groups we wouldn't want to overlap with 08:02:45 QingAn: re timeslot, since Chinese participants aren't likely to travel, picking the early timeslot would be best 08:03:32 ... I'll collect feedback from other CG participants via email 08:04:00 ... Our next meeting will be 2 weeks from now, May 25 at 2 pm UTC 08:04:11 RRSAgent, draft minutes 08:04:11 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2022/05/11-webview-minutes.html dom 08:04:13 RRSAgent, make log public