In recent posts, I’ve explored mechanisms to communicate from web content to local (native) apps, and I explained how web apps can use the HTML5 registerProtocolHandler API to allow launching them from either local apps or other websites. In today’s post, we’ll explore how local apps can launch web apps in the browser. It’s Simple…Continue reading “App-to-Web Communication: Launching Web Apps”
Category Archives: dev
My New Chromium Build PC
While I do most of my work in an office, from time to time I work on code changes to Chromium at home. With the recent deprecation of Jumbo Builds, building the browser on my cheap 2016-era Dell XPS 8900 (i7-6700K) went from unpleasant to impractical. While I pondered buying a high-end Threadripper, I couldn’tContinue reading “My New Chromium Build PC”
Capture Network Logs (NetLog) from Edge and Chrome (and Electron and WebView2)
Problems in accessing websites can often be found and fixed if the network traffic between the browser and the website is captured as the problem occurs and the resulting log file is shared with engineers. This short post explains how to capture such log files. Capturing Network Traffic Logs If someone asked you to readContinue reading “Capture Network Logs (NetLog) from Edge and Chrome (and Electron and WebView2)”
WebOCs and HTTP/2
If you’ve built an application using the old Web Browser Control (mshtml, aka Internet Explorer), you might notice that by default it does not support HTTP/2. For instance, a trivial WebOC host loading Akamai’s HTTP2 test page: When your program is running on any build of Windows 10, you can set a Feature Control KeyContinue reading “WebOCs and HTTP/2”
The Pitfalls of EventSource over HTTP/1.1
While there are many different ways for servers to stream data to clients, the Server-sent Events / EventSource Interface is one of the simplest. Your code simply creates an EventSource and then subscribes to its onmessage callback: Implementing the server side is almost as simple: your handler just prefaces each piece of data it wantsContinue reading “The Pitfalls of EventSource over HTTP/1.1”
Same-Site Cookies By Default
The Chrome team is embarking on a clever and bold plan to change the recipe for cookies. It’s one of the most consequential changes to the web platform in almost a decade, but with any luck, users won’t notice anything has changed. But if you’re a web developer, you should start testing your sites andContinue reading “Same-Site Cookies By Default”
Web-to-App Communication: DirectInvoke
Note: This post is part of a series about Web-to-App Communication techniques. Background Typically, if you want your website to send a document to a client application, you simply send the file as a download. Your server indicates that a file should be treated as a download in one of a few simple ways: Specifying aContinue reading “Web-to-App Communication: DirectInvoke”
Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions
As we’ve been working to replatform the new Microsoft Edge browser atop Chromium, one interesting outcome has been early exposure to a lot more bugs in Chromium. Rapidly root-causing these regressions (bugs in scenarios that used to work correctly) has been a high-priority activity to help ensure Edge users have a good experience with ourContinue reading “Livin’ on the Edge: Root Causing Regressions”
Web-to-App Communication: App Protocols
Note: This post is part of a series about Web-to-App Communication techniques. Just over eight years ago, I wrote my last blog post about App Protocols, a class of URL schemes that typically1 open another program on your computer instead of returning data to the web browser. A valid scheme name is an ASCII letter followedContinue reading “Web-to-App Communication: App Protocols”
Browser Architecture: Web-to-App Communication Overview
This is an introduction/summary post which will link to individual articles about browser mechanisms for communicating directly between web content and native apps on the local computer. This series aims to provide, for each mechanism, information about: Application Protocols Read my Blog post. tl;dr: Apps can register protocol schemes. Browsers will spawn the apps when navigatingContinue reading “Browser Architecture: Web-to-App Communication Overview”
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