## What We Know So Far 1. Because of the file:// url loading bug, we couldn't support the WKWebView in the iOS 8 GM release. It has since been fixed, for release post iOS 8.1 (not sure when), through a new WKWebView API function ( http://trac.webkit.org/changeset/174029/trunk) 2. The alternative is embedding a local web server and serving assets from that
## Abandon file:// url Loading API Method My proposal is, we abandon the local file:// url loading method in (1) above, since it will create problems with support. For example, if we support the new local file url loading API function in iOS 8.2.0 (speculated) -- and a user is on 8.0.2, what then? You would not have WKWebView support for that user, and you would use UIWebView instead. This will just be confusing, and leads to problems. With the embedded local web server method, you can support **any** version of iOS 8.x. ## Embrace Embedded Local Web Server Method I have a Cordova plugin that implements this, and it should work with cordova-ios 3.7.0: https://github.com/shazron/CordovaLocalWebServer It dynamically updates the <access> tag value when it loads, overriding it to the actual location and port. Since it is a plugin, it can be swappable (for whatever reason). It does not solve the problem where any backgrounded app can access our local web server. ## Future Steps This plugin is already working in cordova-ios 3.7.0 (un-released, up next for vote release). The wkwebview branch: 1. Needs be rebased 2. Needs to be re-tested 3. issues in CB-7043 that relate to the wkwebview have to be resolved 4. branch presented for review to other committers 5. resolve any comments and issues from (4) 6. wkwebview branch integrated into master I will work on these items next after getting cordova-ios 3.7.0 out. Any help is welcome. ## Migration Issues If you are migrating to WKWebView from UIWebView, you will lose some functionality. 1. No more whitelist feature (NSURLProtocol is not supported in WKWebView) 2. Your XmlHttpRequest calls now need to be CORS compliant (this is still true if loaded through a file:// url) 3. HTML5 offline application cache is not available in WKWebView ( https://devforums.apple.com/message/1060452)
