For the More Curious: KitKat’s WebView Overhaul

WebView underwent a serious overhaul with the release of KitKat (Android 4.4, API 19). The new WebView is based on the Chromium open source project. It now shares the same rendering engine used by the Chrome for Android app, meaning pages should look and behave more consistently across the two. (However, WebView does not have all the features Chrome for Android does. You can see a good table comparing the two at https://​developer.chrome.com/​multidevice/​webview/​overview.)

The move to Chromium meant some really exciting improvements for WebView, like support for new web standards like HTML5 and CSS3, an updated JavaScript engine, and improved performance. From a development perspective, ...

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