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by disusered 4007 days ago
https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html?ut...

What about the other 50% of Android users that don't have Chrome or Chrome WebView? I've been working mobile for a few years now and would love to drop anything before KitKat, but that's not something feasible given market share.

In practice, pre 4.4 embedded WebViews have worse support for standards than Mobile Safari. Chrome for Android was in part a system component in order to replace 4.4's embedded WebView, only until 5.0+ did it become decoupled.[1]

Google's evergreen approach reduces fragmentation of a core API and it's been a godsend. I know in the future, Safari will be left alone as a pain point. Just don't misrepresent the present situation, where older Android has worse standards support than Mobile Safari and can't even be debugged in devtools.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/webview/overview
2 comments
lotharbot 4007 days ago
> "pre 4.4 embedded WebViews have worse support for standards than Mobile Safari"

My old Windows XP box also has worse support for standards than Mobile Safari.

OK, so XP also doesn't have market share. But it's hard to blame older versions of Android for not supporting standards that didn't exist when they were implemented, just because people continue to buy low-end devices running those old versions.

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exelius 4007 days ago
Right, but at the same time you can't say that Safari is the only thing holding mobile web development back. Because dropping users on "old" versions of Android isn't an option from a business standpoint, Safari isn't the only thing holding people back. And 4.4 really isn't that old; so there are tons of users on older devices.
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giovannibajo1 4007 days ago
The Android browser was a sore joke and didn't support years old standards. It was embarrassing for Google, the top web company, to release a browser that was so impaired and so slow at adopting standards, years after Mobile Safari. With Chrome, google has reverted the situation and they are now bleeding edge.
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criley2 4007 days ago
http://caniuse.com/usage-table

Android Chrome has about 13.3% global usage, and all versions of Android Browser have about 6.5%. If we do not count versions before 4.4, then Android Browser has about 2.5%.

Also worth pointing out that Chrome for Android is over the 1 billion mark (1,000,000,000 - 5,000,000,000)

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