This took a lot longer than planned, but that’s primarily because of us recently being approved for the Marketplace, as we’ve been getting other plugins and examples prepared. But now developers don’t have to deal with the back-and-forth of email communication, and will have their keys always available on the orders page.
Another quick note that mobile support has been taking a lot longer than planned, and hasn’t been rolled out yet:
It turns out we needed to fork a lot of the code for the integrated web browsers on mobile (WebView + WKWebView) in order to get things working properly, especially the custom Java code on Android. Plus the amount of time it takes for us to make iOS builds and test things for iOS has also made things take a bit longer than originally planned.
We finally have a build of WebUI 2.0 ready for Android! There are still a few features that haven’t been implemented yet, but we at least have all the core functionality ready. This includes UFS access via http://game.local/ by leveraging request intercepts in the browser on mobile. We’ve already submitted a new build to Epic Games and should have Android supported on the Marketplace within the next few days.
We also have much of the iOS implementation done as well. However we haven’t had a chance to test everything yet, so we’ll be handling iOS once we get Android out of the way.
There’s now a build for iOS available on the Marketplace:
However there’s still a few bugs that need to be fixed, including UFS loading via http://game.local and pass-through transparency support. We had a third-party developer testing iOS for us, but the language barrier made communication a bit difficult, and they haven’t been around in a while. If there are other developers out there looking to distribute on iOS, be sure to join our Discord server (discord.gg/N9xBKsXkee) to help us compile and test these last few issues for iOS.
Hi, I’m trying to get the plugin to use a newer version of CEF. I’ve managed to compile it using the newer version, but it seems to not be working with the subprocess program TracerWebHelper.
Am I correct in thinking that TracerWebHelper is something you have adapted from EpicWebHelper, but its source code is not included in the WebUI plugin? If so, would you be able to give me some guidance on how TracerWebHelper works so that I can try to recreate it and adapt it to the newer CEF version?
Yes, the TracerWebHelper is just adapted from the EpicWebHelper as you assumed. But no, I’m not going to be able to give you any guidance, as we already plan on updating the CEF ourselves, and spending time teaching someone else when we’re already in the process of doing it, isn’t really an efficient use of our time. Moreover, just because you hacked it together after an entire week doesn’t mean anything of value was actually accomplished, since it’s now no different than the native WebBrowserWidget that comes with the engine.
We’ve explicitly set the minimum version of our update to CEF 124 for the very reason that it includes specific changes. This is most likely why you went with CEF 121, since things changed too considerably in CEF 124, and would have required actual work. Most importantly, there isn’t any accelerated paint support in CEF 121, which is kind of the entire point of this plugin these days.
So again, we’re already working on the CEF 124 update for ALL 3 PLATFORMS and should have this done within the next few weeks, or worst case scenario, before the end of the year.
The WebUI plugin has been updated for UE 5.5 on Fab. In fact, now that Fab supports more than just the previous 3 engine versions, we’ve finally been able to update ALL VERSIONS on Fab. That means you can download the plugin via the Epic Games Launcher even as far back as 4.23, and no longer need to download older versions via our website.
We’ve also disabled sales on our website for this very reason, since everything is now available on Fab. Our website will just redirect you to Fab now instead, which is where all purchases should be made. The WebUI_Example.zip has been included in the Fab downloads as well.
Most importantly, thanks to the generous support of a third-party company, we’ve received some financial incentive to get the CEF 124 updates completed for ALL 3 PLATFORMS. So the CEF 124 update should be released within the next few weeks, or worst case scenario, before the end of the year. We may also use a newer version such as CEF 130 or 131 since those are most recent, but right now our focus is on the huge CEF 124 updates that we want to get working.
I have good news! We’ve finally updated the plugin to CEF 124 on Windows, along with full accelerated paint support using the new official CEF shared texture support (whereas shared textures had to be hacked in manually for the past few years until CEF 124 added it back in).
I was going to update to CEF 130 but it appears some of the recent Chrome/Alloy changes have broken accelerated paint entirely. So we’ll just be sticking with CEF 124 for now until things get more stable.
But other than that, we’re going to roll this update out on Fab within the next few days. We just need to address another critical issue with the /Plugins/Marketplace/WebUI/ folder path due to the new way Fab is naming plugin folders. For example /Plugins/Marketplace/WebUI88b6dfde9859V13 in some cases.
We’ll let you all know when the new update has been approved by Epic.
