Will the android webView be Chrome engine based since android 4.1?

android webview chromium chrome-for-android
pierrotlefou picture pierrotlefou · Aug 30, 2012 · Viewed 7.4k times · Source

According to 2012 google I/O talk (excerpt below), android webView will be chromium based since version 4.1. Is this already the case for the source code downloaded?

In addition, how should I interpret the statement that "WebView and Chrome browser will be the same"? Does that mean the chrome browser will be built upon webView just as the original android browser was.

Q: With Chrome on Android what happens to the original Android browser and WebView?

A: ICS->JB upgrade will not pre-install Chrome. WebView will be converted to Chromium based code. Android and Chrome engineers are working together.

Q: Will WebView get updated?

A: WebView and Chrome browser will be the same when the OS is upgraded. Every 6 weeks Chrome will be updated but WebView will not. Just to be careful not to break anything.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/google-io-2012-android-fireside-chat/2637

Answer

vino picture vino · Sep 1, 2012

pierr, Based on what I see in the chromium source code it does not look like Chrome is built on top of WebView. I can see that a new class named ContentView is used by Chrome to function as the Chrome equivalent of "WebView".

The way I would interpret the statement you have mentioned is that Chrome & Android's WebView will share the same underlying WebKit code and potentially the interfaces that connect the Java layer functionality to C++ code. At least for the time being, Chrome is likely to use its own implementation of a webview-like class for its purposes.

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