Apple Extends Deadline Requiring Apps to Stop Using UIWebView

I'm a developer and I agree with this, I hate using an app that is just a webwiew wrapper. I think Apple is trying to "encourage" developers to just create a native UI experience. If I'm in an app with a link, just send me to the default browser, don't keep me in your app.

Ha, and I just this week sent in updates for my two apps where I migrated to WKWebView from UIWebView :) But for me it's alright, the apps are now much improved, given the fact that WKWebView behaves much better as a "browser" view. I only ran into two snags: Default scaling is different so needed to compensate for that, and loading local image files using a "file://" URL is not supported due to security (or rather sandboxing) reasons per default, so needed to handle those URLs myself. Other than that, painless, and I should really have done this years ago, since at least in my use case, WKWebView was way more suitable.

We had plenty of warning about this. However, initially, WKWebView didn't have all of the required features to let us switch. Now there's very little need to keep supporting UIWebView.

The problem is that unless something has changed recently, WKWeb is woefully inadequate as a replacement for UIWebView. In particular, it isn't possible to change out the network machinery under the hood. You use Apple's networking stack, period. Want to do something interesting, such as changing the caching behavior? Too bad. You get what Apple gives you.

Basically, what Apple is saying is that they no longer care about any of those interesting corner cases that WKWebView can't handle, and that developers who need to do these things should choose another platform. That's why folks are shocked that Apple is doing this, just like we were all shocked when they deprecated UIWebView before making WKWebView a full-featured replacement.

Implementation of this ridiculous policy doesn't need to be delayed. It needs to be canceled outright until such time as WKWebView can replace EVERY use case for UIWebView. Best case is late 2021.

No need to try and change your mind as WebView apps don't get past Apple app store review process for obvious reasons.

There are good and legitimate reasons for using WKWeb in an app for example to take a user to a support page where they can see stuff like known bugs being worked on, FAQ's and anything you don't want to hardwire into your app and be able to update instantly.
Also HTML formatting makes for nice in app document presentation so you can include in-app guides etc in html with graphics which the app will load from memory and not over the net.

Agreeing with this as an user.
I really don’t mind if there’s HTML based sections, text, graphics or even full browser functionality. Even in the online case, a lot of the times I really don’t want to get out of the app.
Example: chatting on Discord and someone sends a link to an animated gif, it would be annoying to tap it and the thing pans to a new app safari tab window, see it, click on the open tabs display, close that last one, app change back to discord... nah, it’s good to see the image open in built-in browser, tap done when... well, done.
Example 2, I actually mostly read macrumors at random hours of the day (like currently 3am) on my phone via the RSS reader app Feedly.
I think it’s definitely a webview for the links opened, with an option to open in safari button, share and whatnot... 99.9% of the time I’m just inside feedly’s builtin browser, including this very same comment. Once done I just tap done and get to where I was on the feed list.

I don't understand why Webview is a thing even?

I'm not a dev, just Apple fan, but this bugs me. Why we have so many "so-called apps" that just use web stuff warped in an app? I could just open up Safari?

Also, I hate scaling on my XS Max vs 6S. I feel like i have all the extra space but everything is zoomed? (Facebook app (i assume web wrapper some kind) is differently scaled between "native app" and Safari?!?)

Frameworks like Ionic use it, allowing developers to create an app in HTML/CSS/JavaScript and create apps for multiple targets like iOS and Android.