December 06, 2024

WebView Community Group Recap: 2024 and Beyond

Hi everyone,

As the year winds down, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate what we’ve achieved together in 2024 and share a bit about where we’re headed next year. This year has been full of incredible milestones, and it’s worth reflecting on how far we’ve come and what we can do next year.

What We Accomplished in 2024

caniwebview.com Project

We launched caniwebview.com as a publicly accessible resource to document how WebViews behave across different platforms. With the valuable data we get from sources like Open Web Docs, Browser Compat Data and Baseline caniwebview can help you find out if web APIs are available for use in WebViews. You can compare WebViews, browsers and browse the compatibility information in different granularity from web features down to specific APIs

This initiative is all about helping developers understand and navigate inconsistencies to create smoother experiences. We’re excited to keep building on this momentum in the coming year.

WebView Survey

We ran a small survey about WebViews with the help of W3C China. It got only a few responses, but we can learn from the questions asked on what works best for the next survey. There are a few ideas for a bigger survey or even better short surveys to gather interesting data on WebViews.

Collaborations at TPAC 2024

Our discussions at TPAC this year were a highlight. We tackled major topics like getting WebViews into the web platform baseline and brainstorming ways to shift how developers see and work with WebViews. It was fantastic to see so many engaged participants and collect great new ideas and inspirations. Moving forward, we plan to strengthen these collaborations with more focused meetings to drive these efforts toward tangible outcomes.

What’s Next for 2025

Expanding caniwebview.com

We’ll continue to expand caniwebview.com, incorporating more WebViews and data. Our goal is to make it easier for developers to navigate the complex landscape of WebViews and reduce the trial-and-error currently needed to achieve consistent behavior across platforms. Historically WebView documentation, bugs and workarounds are spread all over the internet. I think caniwebview has the potential to become the go-to place for WebView developers.

 Standardizing Behavioral Data

A new task force will focus on standardizing behavioral data formats. By creating consistent formats, we hope to make it easier for developers to contribute data and for tools to present it in a clear and useful way. This consistency will not only benefit WebView developers but also pave the way for future standards discussions. This task force is still forming and will start with discussing specifics and expectations in a first meeting soon. The goal of this group is to ultimately improve the issues we discovered.

Targeted WebView Surveys

As discussed at TPAC we are planning to run small targeted surveys to measure developer perception for example on MDN. Please stay tuned and reach out if you want to contribute.

“State of WebViews” Report

We plan to create a report to showcase where WebViews are today and where they’re headed. This “State of WebViews” report will provide insights into areas of opportunity for improvement, offering a big-picture view of the ecosystem.

I’m pretty sure this doesn’t cover everything we covered this year, but thanks for reading. None of this would be possible without the energy and creativity you bring to this community. I’m excited to see what we can achieve together in 2025!

The WebView Community Group chairs wish you all a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year.

Cheers,

Niklas