Modern WebView on Android is powered by an auto-updating Chrome. But that still leaves ~8% of devices without up-to-date WebView runtimes:https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/ …
-
Show this thread
-
...for context, that's almost half the number of people with iPhones. The scale of Android is mind-boggling. But even with auto-updating WebView handling (some of) the security aspects, the privacy issue remains. WebViews aren't browsers.
1 reply 1 retweet 10 likesShow this thread -
Installing a different browser as your default on the system doesn't change the app's WebView implementation. Sure, they can bring their own (super common in CN), but user choice and privacy is undermined. The app *still gets to see everything you do in the WebView*.
4 replies 2 retweets 10 likesShow this thread -
...every keystroke you type, every password you enter, every site you go to in that session. You're now trusting the parent app with *everything*. You installed Brave or Samsung Internet or Opera or FF as your default browser? Tough. In-app, WebView-based browsers DGAF.
2 replies 3 retweets 14 likesShow this thread -
...whereas CCT puts your browsing back in your hands. With CCT, your choices matter, and bowsers can compete on security/privacy/tracking/etc.
2 replies 2 retweets 11 likesShow this thread -
There's a further issue, though. WebViews aren't meant to be full implementations of the web platform. They're sort of halflings: some core stuff is built-in, but anything that reaches outside of the renderer -- APIs that do something other than CSS/HTML/JS -- is often busted.
1 reply 1 retweet 6 likesShow this thread -
This makes WebView based in-app "browsers" totally broken from the perspective of the web platform. They are boat-anchors for progress on the web, even when they're built form exactly the same source code.
2 replies 1 retweet 11 likesShow this thread -
But as much as *I* care about that, it's something of a minor point in the grand scheme. The big issue here is privacy. And WebViews are even worse than just letting the app itself sniff and rewrite all the pages you see... ...remember those out-of-date WebViews?
2 replies 0 retweets 4 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @slightlylate
What does the Facebook app do on Android? (I don’t have a device to check on.)
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
This Tweet is unavailable.
I'm not surprised, I'm upset. FB knows what they're doing here (and they know that we know they know)...and yet. This is an anti-user choice.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
& Web Standards TL; Blink API OWNER
Named PWAs w/
DMs open. Tweets my own; press@google.com for official comms.