Android 5.0 WebView - Yay

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In the past I have attempted to use the Android WebView component embedded in a simple Java application to run a HTML application but without much success. 

Creating simple games was a bit of a pain and things like JQueryMobile just did not work very well. Just not up to the standard I wanted and my standards are pretty low. Although then again my web dev skills are pretty low.

The reason I want to develop using JavaScript and HTML was partially speed of iteration you get from using a desktop browser and partly because I thought it would be a fun experience. At the time I was not enjoying Android Dev that much although later I grew to like it again. I digress.

Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) brought in a host of changes to WebView, that is they started to use Chrome as their base but it still seemed to lag behind in terms of technologies. Android 5.0 seems to have brought in support for WebGL, WebAudio and WebRTC and this is all good stuff. 

The best thing about the update is the innocent looking line that says they have un-bundled WebView from the system and will update it through Google Play. This is absolutely brilliant, err awesome is another word to use, it is by far the most important part of the announcement. WebView will now be able to gain new support for technologies and bug fixes without the OS updating. 

Overall it actually encourages me to have a go at making more android applications using WebView and a little bit of Java. Once I get hold of the latest version of android I will be sure to experiment. Of course it will be a while before android 5 is popular in terms of consumers.

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