Classic WebView Warning Banner in SEB >= 3.4.1 macOS

[Davidorel94]

Dear GitHub Support Team,

I am writing on behalf of a group of students at TUM, as advised by our professor, regarding a compatibility issue with the Safe Exam Browser (SEB) on macOS.

Several of us encountered the following error when attempting to use SEB:

"Classic WebView is deprecated and no longer fully supported by macOS! The used SEB assessment system integration/settings need to be updated to support the modern WebView."
Additionally, we face issues while navigating Moodle and submitting assignments via the SEB platform:

After accessing certain tools like MATLAB Grader, we are unable to navigate back to Moodle.
Submission of solution IDs does not work properly, and copying/pasting the IDs elsewhere is not possible.
We understand that SEB compatibility with macOS environments might require adjustments. Could you kindly advise on any potential workarounds or updates to SEB that address these challenges?

We appreciate any guidance or recommendations you can provide. If you require further details about the issue or specific system environments, please let us know.

Thank you for your support!

Best regards,

[danschlet]

Hi,

The warning banner "Classic WebView is deprecated and no longer fully supported by macOS! The used SEB assessment system integration/settings need to be updated to support the modern WebView." indicates that either a Moodle version older than 4.1 is used or URL filters with enabled content filtering. Then SEB is using the classic WebView, which is a completely outdated version of the WebKit browser engine. This could then explain the issues with other web tools like MATLAB Grader.

Usually you can only pinch-to-zoom a web page when SEB is displaying it in a modern WebView (not PDFs, those can always be zoomed like that). Also in the SEB log you see if the modern WebView was used. So first verify if the classic WebView is used for the exams where you encounter issues. If yes, either update Moodle or don't use URL content filtering for now. You can find links with more information about modern/classic WebView here: #472 (comment)

[menziesrm]

@danschlet Hi Dan, Can you provide any guidance on a rough time I should be aiming from moving from passing keys via the HTTP headers and moving to the JS API? I am cautious that this functionality could stop working at any moment?

[danschlet]

Well this transition should have happened years ago, when we introduced the SEB JS API. SEB for iOS doesn't support the http header method already since version 3.4, as the classic WebView (UIWebView) broke in iOS 18.

We probably will leave support for classic WebView in SEB for macOS until that one also has unfixable bugs or is removed by Apple. Which could happen with any macOS update, most likely the next major update (macOS 16 this fall?). Just note that this is already a very old web browser engine lacking proper support for some modern web APIs and having unfixed bugs.