Re: Some questions about WebLayer

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Bo Liu

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Mar 25, 2020, 10:35:00 AM3/25/20
to 易旭昕, weblay...@chromium.org, android-webview-dev
+weblayer-dev

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 6:19 AM 易旭昕 <roge...@gmail.com> wrote:
From the readme of WebLayer (https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:weblayer/README.md?originalUrl=https:%2F%2Fcs.chromium.org%2F), my understandings are:

1. Similar to WebView, but more general and no need to use Android's private APIs;
2. A View wrapper of Chrome for Android, same rendering pipeline instead of use WebView's special one;
3. 3rd Apps can embed WebLayer such as they embed WebView, but with chrome integrated, so they can update it by itself;
4. Behavior not full compatible with WebView, such as sync scrolling;

Wish to have more information, any design docs are welcome.

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Toby Sargeant

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Mar 25, 2020, 10:52:11 AM3/25/20
to Bo Liu, 易旭昕, weblay...@chromium.org, android-webview-dev
Sorry for the vague answer here, but until such time as a public announcement is made, you should treat this project as experimental and subject to change or cancellation at any time. It is not intended to replace WebView, or to support any particular developer use cases.

We don't have any public documentation - other than what is checked in to the Chromium repository - to share at this time.

Torne (Richard Coles)

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Mar 25, 2020, 11:33:24 AM3/25/20
to Toby Sargeant, Bo Liu, 易旭昕, weblay...@chromium.org, android-webview-dev
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 10:52, 'Toby Sargeant' via weblayer-dev <weblay...@chromium.org> wrote:
Sorry for the vague answer here, but until such time as a public announcement is made, you should treat this project as experimental and subject to change or cancellation at any time. It is not intended to replace WebView, or to support any particular developer use cases.

We don't have any public documentation - other than what is checked in to the Chromium repository - to share at this time.

Second what Toby says here but just FYI, if what you want is a way to have the rendering engine embedded in your app so that you can update it independently of the version of WebView installed on the system (which I'm guessing from your point 3), then WebLayer is not that, and won't serve your use case - just like WebView, the current implementation of WebLayer is loaded from an existing installed webview/chrome apk and so you still cannot control updates/versioning.
 
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 14:34, Bo Liu <bo...@chromium.org> wrote:
+weblayer-dev

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 6:19 AM 易旭昕 <roge...@gmail.com> wrote:
From the readme of WebLayer (https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:weblayer/README.md?originalUrl=https:%2F%2Fcs.chromium.org%2F), my understandings are:

1. Similar to WebView, but more general and no need to use Android's private APIs;
2. A View wrapper of Chrome for Android, same rendering pipeline instead of use WebView's special one;
3. 3rd Apps can embed WebLayer such as they embed WebView, but with chrome integrated, so they can update it by itself;
4. Behavior not full compatible with WebView, such as sync scrolling;

Wish to have more information, any design docs are welcome.

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易旭昕

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Mar 25, 2020, 10:07:01 PM3/25/20
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Seems my guess is not correct, still curious about its purpose and its typical use case. Anyway, thanks for the reply.


在 2020年3月25日星期三 UTC+8下午11:33:25,Torne (Richard Coles)写道:
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 10:52, 'Toby Sargeant' via weblayer-dev <weblay...@chromium.org> wrote:
Sorry for the vague answer here, but until such time as a public announcement is made, you should treat this project as experimental and subject to change or cancellation at any time. It is not intended to replace WebView, or to support any particular developer use cases.

We don't have any public documentation - other than what is checked in to the Chromium repository - to share at this time.

Second what Toby says here but just FYI, if what you want is a way to have the rendering engine embedded in your app so that you can update it independently of the version of WebView installed on the system (which I'm guessing from your point 3), then WebLayer is not that, and won't serve your use case - just like WebView, the current implementation of WebLayer is loaded from an existing installed webview/chrome apk and so you still cannot control updates/versioning.
 
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020 at 14:34, Bo Liu <bo...@chromium.org> wrote:
+weblayer-dev

On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 6:19 AM 易旭昕 <roge...@gmail.com> wrote:
From the readme of WebLayer (https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:weblayer/README.md?originalUrl=https:%2F%2Fcs.chromium.org%2F), my understandings are:

1. Similar to WebView, but more general and no need to use Android's private APIs;
2. A View wrapper of Chrome for Android, same rendering pipeline instead of use WebView's special one;
3. 3rd Apps can embed WebLayer such as they embed WebView, but with chrome integrated, so they can update it by itself;
4. Behavior not full compatible with WebView, such as sync scrolling;

Wish to have more information, any design docs are welcome.

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顾怀建

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Sep 21, 2020, 11:45:34 PM9/21/20
to weblayer-dev, 易旭昕, tobi...@google.com, bo...@chromium.org, weblay...@chromium.org, android-webview-dev
Hi Toby 
The weblayer project  looks interesting, and  I'm also still curious about  it.

1. What about current progress and situationthe of the weblayer project? 
2. and what's the current milestone ?
3.Are there any design docs or other things can share publicly about this? The //weblayer/README.md is pretty thin :).  

Thanks a lot.

PS:
I  notice that
1.  John Abd-El-Malek <j...@chromium.org>  created and commit initial version of weblayer at about Aug 21 2019
2. and then John Abd-El-Malek  widely announce src/weblayer  in weblayer-dev  at about Nov 1 2019
    https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/weblayer-dev/c/TYeAdtuo-QU    PSA: WebLayer, a new embedding API

Toby Sargeant

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Sep 22, 2020, 4:52:04 AM9/22/20
to 顾怀建, 易旭昕, bo...@chromium.org, weblay...@chromium.org, android-webview-dev
[bcc'ing a few internal folks]

I've left the team; I'll leave others to answer this.

Christian O. Andersson

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Sep 22, 2020, 7:32:46 AM9/22/20
to Toby Sargeant, 顾怀建, 易旭昕, bo...@chromium.org, weblay...@chromium.org, android-webview-dev
Hi there,

Thanks for your interest! 
WebLayer is currently an experimental API we develop for internal projects, and we have not yet decided to what extent we'll support this as a durable API external parties can rely on. If you decide to experiment with it, please bear in mind that we make no guarantees at this time (e.g. API stability over time).

Having said that, if you do find it useful, we'd be interested in understanding your use case / pain-points, as we consider whether or not we should commit to supporting WebLayer going forward.
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