According to a report by 9to5 Google, on March 23, a large number of Android users experienced a continuous flash back of some Android apps within a few hours. Some people found that they could stop the flash back by uninstalling WebView on Android. Google has released a permanent fix for the crash issue, which involves updating the Android System WebView and Chrome browser version 89.0.4389.105.

In fact, Android fragmentation has been a problem since its inception, and there doesn’t seem to be a good solution. Browser cores vary from system to system and from vendor to vendor, resulting in endless compatibility problems that are a headache for many Android developers.

In order to completely solve and control these problems, MPAAS integrates independent UC Browser kernel, so that the flashback, lag and other problems caused by WebView can be effectively converged and unified control. At the same time, browser-related flashbacks and ANR(Application Not Resurrect) were significantly reduced using the UC Browser kernel based on many business applications and tests.

In addition, any security issues that arise around WebView can be fixed and released by MPAaS [1] in the first place, far more efficiently than vendor upgrades.

In addition to the UC WebView kernel, MPaaS also inherits the container and offline package technology of Alipay deep application.

Typically, when launching an online page in an App, there is a white screen stage where the browser needs to download HTML resources from the server. Due to the limitation of the mobile network, the resource loading time is not controllable, and it usually takes more than 300ms to practice, and the user will see a white screen in this period of time.

In order to optimize the user experience and reduce the blank screen time, Alipay has introduced offline package technology in the container. Offline package can be simply understood as a ZIP compressed package, which contains HTML, CSS, JS, pictures and other resources needed for the front-end page. When it is built into the client, the container will open the offline package page and directly obtain resources from the offline package. This process takes only milliseconds and eliminates the problem of the page starting with a white screen.

Currently, the MPaaS container solution supports HTML5 and applets. With the offline package capability, static resources such as rendering, logic and configuration can be easily preset to get rid of the influence of network environment on page loading and improve user experience.

At the same time, with the help of MPaaS dynamic publishing service, rapid development can be realized for new product/business requirements, and the release can be completed through the MPaaS console. The container SDK integrated in the end-user client will automatically pull the latest offline packages. This release and update process does not need to be approved by the app store, which maximizes the efficiency of business iteration.

Reference documentation

[1] mPaaS dynamic release product documentation: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/49580.html

[2] mPaaS H5 containers and offline package product documentation: https://help.aliyun.com/document_detail/59192.html

-END-