DecSoft Support - WKWebView vs. UIWebView for iOS

WKWebView vs. UIWebView for iOS

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Hello to all,

I hope you are all well. This post is to talk about the convenience to use the WKWebView engine instead of UIWebView engine for Apple iOS. These engines are "the internal browser" (in few words) in which our apps run in iOS. Apple is near to start to rejecting apps to be published in the Apple Store if they continue to use the UIWebView engine, but, this probably is not the most important reason to start to use the WKWebView engine in our apps.

The UIWebView engine works reasonably well, however, the WKWebView engine get our apps working more fluid and in a more consistent way with the modern browsers. One of the DecSoft App Builder platform are the modern browsers, and, what we wanted (always that is possible) is that our code works in modern browsers as well in iOS, Android and other platforms, without any code changes.

How to be ready with the WKWebView engine in our apps? It's quite easy! In your App Options -> Apache Cordova -> Configuration -> Extra XML textarea, place the below XML code, which applies only to the Apple iOS platform:


 <platform name="ios">
  <preference name="WKWebViewOnly" value="true"> 
  <preference name="scheme" value="app">
  <preference name="hostname" value="localhost">
 </platform>

That's all! Save the changes, compile your app with AB and then with XCode, if everything is OK, your app is now using the WKWebView engine instead of the UIWebView engine and you and your app's users can enjoy the enhancements.

P.S. To see the above working, we must compile our app with cordova-ios 6.x (while I write this post using the latest version 6.1.0) and we must set the iOS "Deployment target" to 11.

P.S.2. The described above works in both the previous generation of DecSoft App Builder and also the current generation of the product. Remember, however, that the previous generation of AB is no more available, except for already customers. The current generation of DecSoft App Builder (which you can download from this website) is the recommended for new projects.

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