Re: [minutes] WebView CG call 2022-06-08

Dom, Thanks for the scribe!

Qing


------------------------------------------------------------------
From:Dominique Hazael-Massieux <dom@w3.org>
Send Time:2022年6月8日(星期三) 15:55
To:public-webview <public-webview@w3.org>
Subject:[minutes] WebView CG call 2022-06-08

Hi,

The minutes of today's WebView CG call are available at:
https://www.w3.org/2022/06/08-webview-minutes.html

and copied as text below.

Dom

                                WebView CG

08 June 2022

    [2]Agenda. [3]IRC log.

       [2] 
https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/blob/main/meetings/4th-meeting-agenda-220608.md
       [3] https://www.w3.org/2022/06/08-webview-irc

Attendees

    Present
           BradyDuga, Dom, JiashengWu, MaxTsoy, Niklas Merz,
           NiklasMerz, QingAn, Rayan

    Regrets
           -

    Chair
           QingAn, Rayan

    Scribe
           dom

Contents

     1. [4]Review and discuss use cases
          1. [5]#12
          2. [6]#16
          3. [7]#17
          4. [8]#7
          5. [9]#10
     2. [10]AOB

Meeting minutes

    ghurlbot, use WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges

    <ghurlbot> dom, OK

   Review and discuss use cases

     #12

    <ghurlbot> [11]Issue 12 Sharing HTTP requests/responses between
    Native & Webview (JohnRiv) use case, Agenda+

      [11] https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/12

    QingAn: this use case is about sharing http requests &
    responses between native & webview
    … or use native as a proxy for the WebView
    … I've described the scenarios associated with this usage
    … 1st four are articulated around proxy with access control,
    firewall, ...
    … the last one is more directly related to sharing
    request/response

    Niklas: +1 to this use case - I've had to do this kind of
    native proxy to work around CORS issues

    QingAn: +1 on this being a valid use case
    … is there agreement on adding this to the document?
    … any objection or further comment?

    Rayan: using to bypass the CORS / security model for the Web
    shouldn't be something we push for
    … we should maintain the privacy / security pillars of the Web

    QingAn: could you comment to that effect in the issue?

    dom: how would do e.g. a podcast app without overriding CORS?

    rayan: I just want to make sure we discuss the situation rather
    than accepting CORS-override as a default
    … there are alternatives that are worth documenting at the very
    least
    … will bring it to the issue

     #16

    <ghurlbot> [12]Issue 16 Display and manipulate third party
    content while blocking third party scripting (bduga) use case,
    Agenda+

      [12] https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/16

    Brady: this comes up frequently in the digital publishing world
    … we have 3rd party content from publishers or from users
    … we want to display it in a WebView for rich display
    … but we don't want any script to run - we don't want to have
    to trust them
    … but we still want to manipulate the content (e.g. to change
    fonts, margins)
    … which typically would be done through script injection
    … you can't turn off JS to run yours, but you don't want to run
    the 3rd party JS

    dom: wouldn't Content Security Policy enable this?

    Brady: maybe, I don't know
    … our approach has been to remove as much as JS as we can, but
    that's never going to be perfect

    dom: we should add Content-Security-Policy to the related W3C
    deliverables

    brady: a solution that I like is exposing the DOM & CSS OM to
    native code so that I don't have to write JS - but probably
    lots harder to do

    QingAn: I think Android and iOs have private interfaces to
    achieve this

    dom: another approach might be to hook Subresource Integrity to
    control tightly which scripts get executed

    QingAn: a similar issue has been brought up in the context of
    mini apps
    … I'll ask some miniapps folks to chime in with their use cases
    in the issue

    Rayan: supports this as a valid use case
    … +1 to Dom that CSP can support this

    QingAn: is CSP supported in WebViews?

    Rayan: it should be in Android at least

    QingAn: Mini-Apps use OS WebViews and other customized views;
    some miniapps vendors do not support CSP through their webviews

    Rayan: this also relates to Web Platform compat in WebViews

     #17

    <ghurlbot> [13]Issue 17 Render WebView Components and Native
    Components in same layer (QingAn) use case, Agenda+

      [13] https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/17

    QingAn: it's common for hybrid & mini apps to mix native and
    WebView component, e.g. many hybrid apps prefer to use their
    native video component for better performance
    … this means the rendering is done by the native app instead of
    the webview
    … this enables more features due to the native abilities
    … but it creates rendering issues for developers
    … e.g. z-index property can't be applied to the native
    component
    … it would be good if the native component could be rendered in
    the same layer as the webview instead of a different layer
    … e.g. with the native component treated as a DOM node that
    could be better controlled by the developer for layout
    … there are private solutions that address this problem e.g. by
    mini-apps vendors
    … having a solution provided directly by default webviews would
    help
    … this is a widely encountered issue in the miniapps world

    Rayan: hybrid merging of layers feels more like an OS feature
    than a WebView feature
    … is the proposal to make the native component part of the DOM?

    QingAn: yes
    … when we start looking at solutions, I can share how miniapps
    deal with this through private solutions

    Rayan: that would be very interesting

    <QingAn> ?

     #7

    <ghurlbot> [14]Issue 7 What is the "Origin" in a WebView, for
    locally hosted content? (lrosenthol) Agenda+

      [14] https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/7

    Niklas: I've worked with Apache Cordova; Android and iOS have
    different approaches to using local content
    … it used to be that you would use [15]file:///
    … but to help with dealing with cross-origin, they introduced
    two different approaches
    … iOS uses a custom:// scheme, where Android uses a custom
    domain name
    … having a unified approach would help

      [15] https://www.w3.org/

    QingAn: are you suggesting a standardized URI scheme for this?

    Niklas: yes

    QingAn: would locally hosted content considered secure? or are
    there security risks associated with it?

    Niklas: in the context of Apache Cordova, you're in full
    control of the content that gets shipped through app store
    … from my experience, it should be safe

    Rayan: +1 - it should be considered as first party
    … having the ability to standardize its origin would hlep

    s/help

    QingAn: +1
    … should we suggest a standardized scheme for locally hosted
    content in the solution space?

    [room: yes]

    QingAn: should we merge this with #15?

    <ghurlbot> [16]Issue 15 Third party cookies and cross origin
    ressource sharing in webviews (NiklasMerz) use case

      [16] https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/15

    Niklas: #15 is a derivative - we should probably focus on #7
    for now

    <ghurlbot> [17]Issue 7 What is the "Origin" in a WebView, for
    locally hosted content? (lrosenthol) Agenda+

      [17] https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/7

    QingAn: could you add use cases to #7 then Niklas?

    dom: having a well-defined origin will also help with using CSP
    for third-party filtering

     #10

    <ghurlbot> [18]Issue 10 UserScript injection in WebView
    (Token-LiMing) use case

      [18] https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges/issues/10

    Qing: we can close this issue

   AOB

    [19]Winter Community CG

      [19] https://www.w3.org/community/wintercg

    Dom: the Winter CG (Web Interoperable Runtime) CG launched
    recently, with possibly some overlapping interests

    Dom: also TPAC schedule has been announced, including our
    meeting slot for WebView CG

    [20]Draft of WebView: Usage Scenarios and Challenges

      [20] https://webview-cg.github.io/usage-and-challenges/

    QingAn: currently only one use case, will add others we've
    agreed on
    … building up for something to share at the upcoming TPAC