Alternatives to WebView.savePicture() for saving display data

Question

I am trying to get a WebView to stop reloading the page when the device's orientation changes. Per this answer, I was looking at WebView.saveState(). The documentation for this method says:

Please note that this method no longer restores the display data for this WebView. See savePicture(Bundle, File) and restorePicture(Bundle, File) for saving and restoring the display data.

But when I looked at savePicture(), I found that it's been deprecated:

This method is deprecated.
This method is now obsolete.

In that case, what methods should developers be using to save and restore the display data?

@iturki I would prefer to support all orientations, if that is what you're asking. — Amanda S, Jul 13 '11 at 22:02
@iturki Yes, but the WebView turns blank for a second after an orientation change. That's why I was interested in saving the display data. — Amanda S, Jul 13 '11 at 22:21

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 13 '11 at 22:53

0

In your AndroidManifest.xml file, add this config line to your activity:

<activity
        android:name=".MyWebViewActivity"
        android:configChanges="orientation"/>

answered Jul 13 '11 at 22:53

Jason Robinson

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Since the use of `configChanges` is somewhat [controversial](http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/runtime-changes.html#HandlingTheChange), I wanted to try using `saveState()`. This does not answer the question I was asking. – Amanda S Jul 13 '11 at 23:41
What's controversial about it? The first line of that link clearly states that if you don't need to apply any changes during a specific configuration change and it's a performance hit to rebuild the Activity (in your case, reloading a website), then this prevents the activity from being rebuilt. It's only not recommended if you need to use different resources during a certain configuration change. Anywhere in your Activity, are you using different resources based on the orientation? – Jason Robinson Jul 14 '11 at 15:28
And even if it were case that you used different resources based on the orientation, you could still easily handle it by overriding the `onConfigurationChanged()` method. In your case, there's no reason why your activity needs to be destroyed and reinitialized all because the orientation changed. – Jason Robinson Jul 14 '11 at 15:30

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 03 '12 at 21:40

I had a very similar problem but had to make a couple of additions to get it to work with various version (including ICS).

In the main app activity I added a slightly different version of what Jason offered.

<activity
android:name=".MyMainActivity"
android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden|screenSize" 
android:label="@string/app_name" >

I had this working on pre-Honeycomb with:

           <activity
        ....
        android:configChanges="orientation|keyboardHidden" 
        .... >

I had to make the first example to get it running on all versions. I'm currently using fragments and ActionBarSherlock for backwards compatibility.

Hope this helps.

Alternatives to WebView.savePicture() for saving display data

2 Answers2