WebView CG Notes - 2024-01-26

The minutes for todays meeting are available in our GitHub Repo:
https://github.com/WebView-CG/meetings/blob/main/2024/2024-01-26.md

A copy is included here for the email archive:

WebView CG Notes - 2024-01-26

Attendees

* Ben Wiser (Google Android)
* Niklas Merz (Apache Cordova)
* Florian Scholz (Open Web Docs)
* François Daoust (W3C)
* Dominique Hazael-Massieux (W3C)
* Maxim Tsoy (DuckDuckGo)
* Abhijith Nair (Google Android)
* Mihai Cîrlănaru (Google Android)
* Martin Alvarez (Huawei)
* Brady Duga (Google Play Books)
* Abhijeet Kandalkar(Igalia)

Scribes

* Mihai Cîrlănaru  (Google Android)

Agenda

* Welcome & Introduction
* Discuss proposed changes to the charter in [Issue
#12](https://github.com/WebView-CG/charter/issues/12) and
[PR](https://github.com/WebView-CG/charter/pull/13). In particular
working on a WebView compatibility report (Ben Wiser)
    * Ben W: Charter Proposal [https://github.com/WebView-
CG/charter/issues/12](https://github.com/WebView-CG/charter/issues/12) 
        * Summary and rationale
        * We want to propose a deliverable: compat report – definitely a
pain point to the community
            * Native and web API compatibility issues
        * Targeting Feb next year to create a compatibility report
talking about different webviews how they compare to each other
        * Questions / Comments
            * Francois: fantastic idea to have a compat report
                * A document might not be needed, interesting to get the
data and alignment with caniuse and/or integration with MDN
                * WebDX community work that is already happening here –
this can simplify the work here
                * Ben: agreed, if we can have something machine readable
as an artefact would be useful – Francois to leave a comment in the
issue
            * Florian: agree with Francois – to share from the MDN
perspective: maintaining [browser compat
data](https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data) which contains one
WebView browser which is the Chrome based one. Did not make a lot of
effort to maintain that data, it’s mainly derived from Chrome Android
through a process that might be error prone. There is a test runner
(called [BCD Collector](https://github.com/openwebdocs/mdn-bcd-
collector)) that runs against chrome desktop and android and highlights
differences: captures features that ship on Chrome Android but not on
WebView which could be a start for the compat report.
                * Ben: thanks for calling out the tool, maybe this is
something that we can contribute towards as a group
            * Caniuse is leveraging the data here
            * Ben: question for the group, how many people are keen to
help on this front
            * Florian: hearing there are several other webviews with
their own compat story and that by design some APIs are not available in
webview, would need a way to highlight this in the compat pages to set
the right expectation for developers.
            * Ben: question around what should a good WebView be? We
won;t be able to reach that without a full picture and a definition of
what a compliant webview would be.
        * Introducing a decision process, we will give time until next
meeting for people to raise concerns and make suggestions – please
continue leaving comments on the GitHub issue
* Discuss if a survey can help us to identify areas to work on (Niklas
Merz)
    * Niklas: ran a survey in the Cordova community which brought
interesting results, better picture on important issues, health
        * Maybe a survey on what do people think about webviews, what
types of webviews they are using would be interesting to this group
        * What does the group think about it and also how do we promote
this survey to get the feedback
        * Idea to compile the results into a report and put a blog post
with conclusions
        * Is it a good idea, what questions should we have and how to
promote it?
        * Questions / Comments:
            * Max Tsoy: FWIW good idea but have concerns on how to reach
the WebView users – not clear if there is a platform for that, maybe
MDN, stackoverflow? If they are then that would be great.
                * Niklas: we need to find a great place to promote it,
e.g. on MDN docs
            * Francois: no answer but the WebDX community has been
running short surveys on MDN ([https://github.com/web-platform-
dx/developer-research](https://github.com/web-platform-dx/developer-
research))  – there is a process in place for CG members to propose
surveys to display them on those pages for a percentage of users. But
these are short surveys with very few questions, so a larger one might
not be possible. This is a path to be used. Various “State of __”
surveys were born in the WebDX CG and that group would be happy to have
a joint discussion on how these can progress. MDN might not be
enthusiastic to run large surveys on their pages as it is a
documentation site not something to be used for surveys.
                * Niklas: great idea, maybe we start with a small survey
and start thinking about questions – will start a GitHub discussion on
this.
                * Ben: echo what Niklas just said – getting questions
together would be the best way to decide on what audience to reach to
                * Niklas: will get this kicked off to find a few
questions
            * Francois: depending on which webviews we considers, China
might be an interesting space to look at, Martin from the Mini Apps CG
is here and might have insights – interesting space to survey as they
have their own channels
                * Martin: a good idea to share the survey with the
miniapp vendors, they are many of them and can send feedback. They would
need it translated to chinese but can speak with W3C China to achieve
that. We have contacts from the vendors that would be interested in
responding here. W3C China has these contacts.
                * Niklas: great to have this and know where to reach out
when ready
            * Max: want to clarify what the specific goals of the survey
would be? Is it compat data, or collecting use cases? What do we want to
get from it?
                * Niklas: let’s collect the questions and see what we
can get out of that. Probably a start would be what webviews are being
used – get background on what is mostly used and what to focus first.
But if you have questions in mind do put them in the list that will
follow shortly.
                * Ben: personally, the compatibility side would be very
beneficial if we can drive it in that direction.
                * Max: thinking on a survey to ask web devs, maybe good
to focus on things that we can only get from that group of devs. Maybe
ask the vendors directly to get more precise data on API usage – when
can discuss async on the questions list.
                * Ben: we do have a W3C slack group that we can use for
async conversation
* Revisit use cases and challenges (Niklas Merz)
[https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-
challenges](https://github.com/WebView-CG/usage-and-challenges)
    * Niklas: it’s been a while but maybe it’s worth going back at some
of these issues and discuss – Any topics in mind that you want to bring
back in discussion?
    * Max: a few use cases I filed when it was started around
compatibility – they still stand largely: issue about injecting JS in
various views and controlling cookies, web storage, intercepting network
requests. Most of the problems are still there, not sure what it would
mean to go back, what next steps might be or how to proceed there. Also
there was a bigger discussion about apps opting out of webviews – that
was the only issue that came from web/app developers so maybe good to
follow up on that.
    * Niklas: not sure what to do with those explainers, maybe as some
are related to the compatibility to revisit them as we work towards the
compatibility report once we have the data.
    * Florian: haven’t read all the previous material here but looking
at the few looks like interesting material there. Proposal about
documenting more about WebViews, it would be great for someone to help
understand the landscape and what would be relevant – maybe with the
help of the survey on what’s missing info. Would want to know which are
still relevant and turn them into plan on how it can be turned into
suitable documentation or tutorials for MDN.
    * Niklas: created a table that put webviews into categories, e.g.
Android WebView, Custom Tabs, think it would be great to understand
which is the correct webview to use based on use case.
    * Ben: this is really the stuff that leads back to that baseline
report. If we agree on what that baseline is and re-evaluating the
challenges and proposal that move the needle. If we have publicly
notable record on what we all agree that a webview is, will encourage
people to do the work.
    * Francois: on the usages and challenges doc, my ring is that it is
still current. Would be useful, seeing the open issues in the underlying
repo, for the document to reflect all the usage limitations and
suggestions.
        * Niklas: will go and check the issues and put them in the
document. If there is a relevant issue that you think should be looked
into ping it so that it’s added.
    * Brian Kardell: checking on the meeting details (IRC, docs) – Ben
will share the details and convert to markdown for the repo. #webview-cg
slack group under W3C
* Ben: nice to see more faces around, will start following on the
actions flagged, please comment on the issues we are creating on GitHub
and continue the conversation async. We will have another meeting in
about a month and it will be earlier in the day to make it easier with
the timezone.