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I have started moving from an SFSafariViewController to a WKWebView in my app. In my case, we have a discussion forum that I wanted to display in a sidebar alon

I have started moving from an SFSafariViewController to a WKWebView in my app. In my case, we have a discussion forum that I wanted to display in a sidebar alongside the app, so people could get help while they work. I also wanted to intercept clicks on certain files to open them directly in the app — making it easier for users to check out other work on the forums. However after reading this article what I will be doing is intercepting any links from my WKWebView to domains outside of my forums and opening them in an SFSafariViewController. I have no intention of tracking anyone, but neither do I want the responsibility or reputation for domains outside of my control

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Shank 4y ago
As a user I’d like to discourage this. If you use SFSafariViewController, the user’s extensions and content blockers load automatically. If you use WKWebView they don’t load at all. I’m one of those users who depends on these and every time a developer uses WKWebView instead it drives me up a wall. Plus, the UI is shared between Safari and it’s easy to jump out.
- interpol_p 4y ago
  In this case, I cannot show a SFSafariViewController side-by-side with the main app on iPad (as it can only be presented modally). On this site there are no ads, and no content to block, it is simply a discussion forum about the app. I'd be happy to put a Safari button on the WKWebView sidebar version, but as it is a coding app and the forums are full of helpful code snippets, having it appear alongside the code editor seems like a valuable proposition. The big advantage of using WKWebView is that when a user posts a zip file containing their project you can simply tap on the link to run the project and see the results. You can also easily share your code to the forum by tapping a button in the app's UI to post it to the thread. These sorts of native<->web integrations are not possible with SFSafariViewController. However I would not want these integrations on any outside domains, and so would push the user back onto SFSafariViewController if, for example, they opened a discussion and tapped a link to an external blog or article. Edit: perhaps I am not explaining this well. Here is an example of what is happening in my app https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1557378008495058944 https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1557378008495058944

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Shank 4y ago

As a user I’d like to discourage this. If you use SFSafariViewController, the user’s extensions and content blockers load automatically. If you use WKWebView they don’t load at all. I’m one of those users who depends on these and every time a developer uses WKWebView instead it drives me up a wall. Plus, the UI is shared between Safari and it’s easy to jump out.

interpol_p 4y ago
In this case, I cannot show a SFSafariViewController side-by-side with the main app on iPad (as it can only be presented modally). On this site there are no ads, and no content to block, it is simply a discussion forum about the app. I'd be happy to put a Safari button on the WKWebView sidebar version, but as it is a coding app and the forums are full of helpful code snippets, having it appear alongside the code editor seems like a valuable proposition. The big advantage of using WKWebView is that when a user posts a zip file containing their project you can simply tap on the link to run the project and see the results. You can also easily share your code to the forum by tapping a button in the app's UI to post it to the thread. These sorts of native<->web integrations are not possible with SFSafariViewController. However I would not want these integrations on any outside domains, and so would push the user back onto SFSafariViewController if, for example, they opened a discussion and tapped a link to an external blog or article. Edit: perhaps I am not explaining this well. Here is an example of what is happening in my app https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1557378008495058944 https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1557378008495058944