IOS8 Webview performance is still significantly slower than mobile Safari

Question

I am developing a PhoneGap HTML5 application that does some image manipulation.

I see that the same script ( http://fornace.io/jstests/gogh.html ) takes about 10 times more time to execute inside Phonegap than in mobile Safari (from 5 seconds to 45).

Since we all understood that iOS8 Webkit finally allowed all applications to use the same Nitro engine as Safari , I wonder if anyone can explain how this huge difference still exists, and if there is a workaround.

Answer 1

There are two different web views with iOS8. Standard UIWebView and the new WKWebView.

WKWebView is the one that will improve everything, but as Cordova developers explained in detail here , there is an error when WKWebView does not allow downloading local files and therefore cannot be implemented with Cordova right now.

This explains the problem you are seeing. Obviously, Apple knows about this problem, and if it is resolved, I expect it to be implemented in Cordoba after this time.

Answer 2

In fact, we must wait for Cordoba to support the new WKWebView. And Cordoba needs to wait for Apple to release a fixed version of iOS.

At the same time, I created a plugin that allows you to use WKWebView as the default web browser for Cordoba applications. It includes several fixes and workarounds for the blockers Cordoba encountered.

Grab it while it's fresh, https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/cordova-plugin-wkwebview

Answer 3

PhoneGap is still using UIWebView due to an error with WKWebView , you will have to implement your own application that will open your URL with WKWebView until Phonegap moves to WKWebView . Obviously, the error is related to opening local files using WKWebView, if you want to open the URL in WKWebView, now it is possible.

Here is a web browsing checker application that you can use to check your url in WKWebView and UIWebView and check the performance: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/browser-resizer/id928647773?mt=8&at = 10ltWQ