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Smart WebView 8.0.0 🌟 (The Legacy Release)

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@mgks mgks released this 02 Dec 16:11
· 36 commits to master since this release
8.0.0
abb3394

This is a landmark release and a personal one for me. After nearly a decade of development, I am thrilled to announce that all premium plugins are now free, open-source, and included directly in the project. This is my thank you to the incredible community that has supported Smart WebView over the years.

With this version, the project reaches what I consider its complete and final form. The world of development moves incredibly fast, and it's time to embrace the new challenges and projects this age has to offer. Therefore, v8.0.0 will be the final major feature release for Smart WebView.

My focus will now shift to ensuring long-term stability through critical bug fixes as they arise. I also hope to carry the project's legacy forward by modularizing its most powerful features into standalone libraries for the broader Android ecosystem.

It's been a great journey. Thank you for being a part of it.

— Ghazi

✨ Major Changes

  • All Plugins Now Open-Source! The entire suite of advanced plugins is now available to everyone:
    • ✅ AdMob: Integrate Google AdMob banner, interstitial, and rewarded ads.
    • ✅ Biometric Authentication: Secure your app with fingerprint or face unlock.
    • ✅ QR & Barcode Reader: Natively scan QR codes and barcodes.
    • ✅ Image Compression: Reduce image sizes before uploading to save bandwidth.
    • ✅ JS Interface: A powerful two-way bridge for seamless communication between your web app and native Android code.

🚀 New Features

  • Custom CSS Injection: You can now apply a custom stylesheet over your loaded web page. Simply create a custom.css file in app/src/main/assets/web/ and enable feature.custom.css=true in swv.properties to hide elements or tweak styles. (Closes #163)
  • Configurable Back Button Behavior: A new option, behavior.back.exits, has been added to swv.properties. When set to true, the hardware back button will exit the app instead of navigating WebView history. (Closes #358)
  • Third-Party Cookie Support: Added a new security.accept.thirdparty.cookies setting in swv.properties to improve compatibility with services like Google reCAPTCHA and social logins. (Closes #357)

🐞 Bug Fixes & Stability Improvements

  • Optimized App Startup Sequence: Refactored the app's initialization process to prevent blocking the main UI thread. Heavy tasks like loading plugins and services are now deferred, resolving a critical issue where the app could hang on the splash screen and significantly improving startup speed.
  • Fixed: UI Dialog Theming: Dialog button text (on Exit Confirmation and Rating prompts) is now clearly visible in the light theme. (Closes #353, #359)
  • Fixed: User Login Sessions Not Saved: Implemented a critical fix to ensure that user login sessions and other cookies are persistently saved when the app is closed.
  • Improved: Modern QR Scanner API: The QR Scanner plugin has been updated to use the latest, non-deprecated AndroidX Activity Result APIs, improving stability and future-proofing the code.
  • Improved: Splash Screen Documentation: The process for customizing the splash screen and welcome screen logos is now clearer and better documented. (Addresses #360)
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