[guardian-dev] EOL Orweb, focus on Firefox?

[Abel Luck]

Nathan of Guardian:
> 
> 
> Abel Luck <abel at guardianproject.info> wrote:
>> Nathan of Guardian:
>>>
>>>
>>> Abel Luck <abel at guardianproject.info> wrote:
>>>> Nathan of Guardian:
>>>>> Here is a plan I would like feedback on:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) don't fix Orweb html5 video issue (the workaround is horrendous)
>>>> and instead update the app to notify users about the risk and advise
>> to
>>>> stop using.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> As a temporary workaround, can we make HTML5 video a checkbox option
>>>> like javascript is and have it disabled by default?
>>>
>>> That is the rub and the bug. I have set all the proper settings to
>> disable plugins and yet it doesn't work. There are no controls in the
>> API apparently for html5 media components. Sucks.
>>>
>>
>> Ugh, ouch. Which means the only fool proof way to do it is to ship a
>> custom WebView :-(
> 
> Yes. The other nearly foolproof approach I have nearly implemented, is to write a headless browser subsystem using httpclient that just uses WebView as an interactive HTML renderer. All pages can then be easily parsed and filtered before rendering.
> 
> It is a ton of work though, and you still can't intercept all calls, for instance HTTP Post. Also JavaScript could still dynamically inject autostart video tags, as well.
> 
Again, ouch. Another not so tenable solution.

Yeah, by not cracking open WebView, we're essentially trying to create
the poorman's TBB.  If we don't want to do that, then I think the best
route is definitely merging FF4A -- thats firefox not ffmpeg ;-) -- with
TBB patchsets. Sounds like you knew that already though.

~abel