Hi Ben, On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 8:27 PM, Ben Bucksch <ben.buck...@beonex.com> wrote:
> Nicholas Alexander wrote on 27.01.2016 00:40: > >> On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 3:36 PM, Ben Bucksch <ben.buck...@beonex.com >> <mailto:ben.buck...@beonex.com>> wrote: >> >> Nicholas Alexander wrote on 26.01.2016 18:02: >> >> >> I assume you meant Cordova. >> >> >> https://cordova.apache.org/ >> >> Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a try. >> >> I hope it's not using the standard Android WebView, though, is it? >> Because I tried WebView (with a native Android wrapper), and it's >> not working for my app. GeckoView worked (with bugs). >> >> (Also, WebView uses a different WebKit on every Android version, >> and ancient Androids are stuck with ancient browser engines. >> Impossible to work with.) >> >> >> Crosswalk (https://crosswalk-project.org/) tries to solve this. >> > > Hey Nicolas, > > based on your suggestion, I just tried to port my Firefox OS app to > Android using Cordova and Crosswalk. It works fairly nicely. The most > difficult part is installing the right Android SDK components. Cordova > itself was a cakewalk, and so was crosswalk. They're nice. > Agreed. > Unfortunately, the WebView version that Crosswalk uses appears to have a > bug in the CSS columns support. (Google Chrome 26 on the same Android > device doesn't have this bug.) > Yeah, I haven't a clue what the WebView versions are. > Is there a way to use GeckoView as Cordova runtime plugin? I found > http://infil00p.org/cordova/phonegap/2014/12/12/cordova-mozilla/ > https://github.com/infil00p/cordova-mozillaview-engine > but it hasn't been updated since its inception. > > Having a GeckoView plugin for Cordova that's easy to install would be a > low-hanging fruit for Firefox on mobile. It's not long hanging fruit, at least not for the Fennec team. The way to do this is to push https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098129 across the line, and then to rebuild whatever the desired GeckoView interface is away from Fennec. There's work to separate the library; work to make this work with the build system; work to rebuild and test GeckoView. Whatever it is, it's not low-hanging. > It shouldn't be too hard to implement (see POC above), and would probably > fairly quickly give you a large installed base of Gecko. Do you have data on Cordova penetration? Is the total addressable market even worth considering? Even if it is, why do we think Cordova users would switch to Gecko? > Many (hybrid mobile web) apps would/could start to use it as their > runtime, and Gecko would regain relevance on mobile. At no time has Gecko been relevant on mobile :( > Of course, it would have to be maintained, at least with fresh builds. But > I think it's a quick win for Mozilla on Android. > Many technology people have made this argument, including myself. But nobody seems to have a story for why this is strategically valuable for the web (or just for Mozilla). Since there's a non-trivial amount of work to do to make *something* happen, and embedding is not a current organization goal and has not been a goal for a *very* long time, I can't justify putting more than a bare minimum of effort into this. (Hence, I haven't pushed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1098129 across the line.) Nick
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