PSA: WebLayer, a new embedding API

[John Abd-El-Malek]

Hello, we wanted to widely announce src/weblayer now that it’s on the CQ and waterfall. WebLayer is a high level embedding API to support building a browser. Unlike src/content, which is only concerned with a sandboxed multi-process web platform, WebLayer includes modern browser features and Google integration. It's the reusable version of Chrome, which might share some portions of the UI and also its support for all the modern HTML5 and browser features (e.g. UI for permissions, autofill, safe browsing etc...). While it's built on top of src/content the API will hide the Content API and its dependencies

The first target is Android so most of the effort is concentrated there. However it’s being built with other platforms in mind for the future, which is why it has both a Java and C++ API.

We hope the maintenance cost for engineers outside the core team will be small. Most of the work will be integrating existing code from src/components and src/chrome (e.g. by refactoring it). Existing testing harnesses (browser and instrumentation) are used. If you run into any issues, feel free to reach out to the team at weblay...@chromium.org.

Thanks,
WebLayer Team

[John Abd-El-Malek]

Right now we're focusing only on internal Google use cases.

While this is exposed from Chrome on Android (technically, the WebView APK), the API is quickly changing and it's definitely not supported for any third party apps to use it.  Once we stress test this out and have Google apps use it, we will consider supporting it for third party apps. In the meantime, while it's possible for other embedders to use the code directly from the repo and link it in their apps, this is also not supported.

On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 10:49 AM Marshall Greenblatt <magree...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi John,

This project looks interesting, thanks for sharing. What is the planned separation point (conceptual and/or functional) between WebLayer and the Chromium (chrome) target? Why would a developer choose to use the WebLayer instead of using chrome headless mode, or just building the chrome target with some local modifications?

Thanks,

Marshall

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[Dirk Pranke]

Are there any design docs or other things you can share publicly about this? The //weblayer/README.md is pretty thin :).

-- Dirk

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[John Abd-El-Malek]

Since the initial targets are internal use cases all the documentation is currently internal (go/weblayer).

[顾怀建]

hi John , BTW

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. Now,  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.  You created and commit initial version of weblayer at about Aug 21 2019

     https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1763644

     https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1766781

2. and then You 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

[Christian O. Andersson]

I notice the thread diverged, so cross-posting my answer here as well

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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[Allen Gu]

@ Christian   THS

I will  continuously foucs and concern about the upstream of weblayer

[李其宁]

Hi~ Weblayer project looks very interesting to me, and I plan to develop my browser project via weblayer shell. But, I am not sure whether weblayer shell support PWA or not.  

I will appreciate your answer a lot!