QtWebEngine/Features

(Incomplete) list of WebEngine features, and how to test for them. Actively maintained list is available on a dedicated documentation page: Qt WebEngine Features

New features discussion - 2023 April workshop, 2024 January update

Ongoing (Jan 2024)

• SubFrames, see https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-112823
  • JS
  • Printing
    • Value type under qwebenginepage perhaps?
    • Want to investigate richer class
• localFonts query

Planned (Jan 2024)

• sub-resource loading status
• Making QML downloaditem C++ public
• Disabling extensions
• Bigger: Extensions
• Direct rendering

• Windows ARM
• custom distioncary addon
• Popup blocker
• WebData investigate
• Investigate memory usage/debugging

Done (Jan 2024)

• Post-data
• Share screen selection
• SavePage API
• ChromeDriver
• Missing FIDO2 API
• WebData popup

Possible for 6.6/6.7 (Apr 2023)

• QWebEngineWindow
  • old patch
  • direct or indirect painting?
• Extensions
  • Extended screen selection (for Teams native/Chromium like API)
  • Qt API
  • Enabling more Chromium extensions API
  • Try plasma-browser-integration. Because it is browser agnostic
  • smaller adblockers and noscript
• API for service workers
  • JS
  • control of install/uninstall
  • might need new QWebEnginePage replacement class
  • needs discovery API
• Popup blocker API
  • WIP patch (by Juri)
• Spellchecker add word
  • probably simple
  • but need to be stored in profile settings ini file.
• Load state on page resources
• Password manager/autofill/webdata
  • probably a lot of work
  • Providing WebData might not be hard, but it is all interconnected
• WebUSB,WebBluetooth
  • Find compelling use-case.
• Permanent settings/permissions
  • Storing profile state between sessions.
  • might have old WIP patch by Kirill
  • Mostly a matter of API and defaults
• Image animation control (QTBUG-86154)
  • animation allowed/once/never
• Picture-in-Picture
  • probably need some kind of overlay support
• Dark mode API
• Install/replace root certificates

Using Google API (Apr 2023)

• Google translate
• Safe browsing

Possible qt 6.8, and see above (Jan 2024)

• Async download requested API QTBUG-118584
• Dedicated OAuth APIs (see apple blog post)
• Loading status of non main/sub-frame resources
• Http-request load in QQuickWebEngineView
• Finished signal on QWebEngineScript - QTBUG-55212

Chromium DevTools

Version: Qt 5.4.0 onwards

Description: Ability to inspect and debug layout and performance issues of any web content.

Documentation: Qt WebEngine Developer Tools and Debugging with WebEngine

How to test: Launch a QtWebEngine app with command line option --remote-debugging-port=[your-port] and use any QtWebEngine-based example browser (from the same version) instance to connect to http://localhost:[your-port]. See documentation for details. Also, widgets' based simplebrowser and quicknanobrowser examples implement opening devtools in a separate view through context menu.

WebRTC

Version: Qt 5.4.0 onwards

Description: Real-Time Communications (RTC) capabilities via simple APIs

Documentation: WebRTC usage

How to test: Set up a webcam / microphone. Open e.g. https://test.webrtc.org/ in simplebrowser for simple test of supported capabilities. Also https://www.webrtc-experiment.com/RecordRTC/ is good to just test screen recording.

HTML5 Geolocation

Version: Qt 5.5.0 onwards

Description: Javascript Geolocation API with QtLocation as a backend

Documentation: HTML5 Geolocation

How to test: QtLocation should be built before QtWebEngine. Using simplebrowser, go to http://html5demos.com/geo, and allow the page to find your position. Note that on Windows you need an external GPS receiver connected, see QtPositioning documentation.

Fullscreen

Version: Qt 5.6.0 onwards

Description: Support for viewing content in fullscreen mode.

Documentation: Fullscreen API support

How to test: Use either specialized videoplayer example or just quicknanobrowser and go to youtube.com or vimeo.com and pick any video. Click on the full screen icon to go into fullscreen mode.

Drag & Drop

Version: Qt 5.7.0 onwards

Description: Support for HTML5 drag and drop.

Documentation: Drag and Drop support

How to test: Try any HTML5 drag and drop demo. E.g. this, that or maybe even yon, or w3schools one. Dragging files into the browser is not part of HTML5 but also works. Try also to invoke context menu of simplebrowser or quicknanobrowser and click 'Save page', which will land an offline copy of a page into default downloads directory. Then just drag this file back to browser from a system file explorer. That should open an offline page through file url.

Printing to PDF

Version: Qt 5.7.0 onwards

Description: Support for printing a web page to a PDF file.

Documentation: Print to PDF file

How to test: Use html2pdf and printme examples to test the feature.

HTML5 DRM video

DRM Protected, widevine plugin

Version: Qt 5.7.0 onwards

Description: Support for viewing DRM protected videos.

How to test: QtWebEngine should be built with proprietary codecs enabled (pass '-proprietary-codecs' to configure when building qt). Try and view videos at. e.g. http://demo.castlabs.com/, http://ssdemo04.swankmp.net/ or https://shaka-player-demo.appspot.com/demo/.

Local Storage

Description: Support for HTML5 local storage.

How to test: It seems currently there are only auto-tests in qtwebengine/tests/auto/widgets/qwebenginepage, and no manual tests or examples.

WebGL

Description: Support for HTML 5 WebGL

How to test: Visit http://webglsamples.org/ or https://threejs.org/examples/ and try available demos.

WebSockets

Description: Support for HTML 5 WebSockets

How to test: Try simple online test echo server https://www.websocket.org/echo.html

PPAPI / PDF Viewer

Version: Qt 5.13.0 onwards

Description: Support for PPAPI plugins, and PDF viewer in particular

Documentation: [1]

How to test: Launch SimpleBrowser, QuickNanoBrowser, and make sure that 'Plugins' are enabled. Load a PDF directly by URL, and indirectly embedded in HTML