I think the issue is that we implement the selection handlers as popup windows. And Android does not support opening popup window in another popup window.

Hmm, interesting.  We were chatting recently about the possibility of switching them composited like in Chrome, this would be another reason.

Well moreover, trying to select in versions lower than N causes it to crash. (same with html selects).

Alex, is there a bug for compositing? 

And this won't solve the HTML select tag problem in tablet's right?

We don't have a meta bug for compositing them, just a bunch of bugs on the symptoms.

For select tags, it wouldn't solve them per se, it would require a separate, analogous change with the same tradeoff (no more ability to spill out of the WebView).

This looks like the classic "trying to create a window with an application context" exception though. What *context* was passed into the webview? Can we detect it's not an activity and not create any pop up windows from it at all?

Taking a step back, I haven't seen any apps that put a webview into a popup window. Any particular reason we are worried about this now?

WebView is created with an activity context.
The code is this in case you wonder:
import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.os.Message;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.Gravity;
import android.view.ViewGroup.LayoutParams;
import android.webkit.WebChromeClient;
import android.webkit.WebView;
import android.webkit.WebViewClient;
import android.widget.LinearLayout;
import android.widget.PopupWindow;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

    private final String TAG = "PopUpWindow";
    private PopupWindow mPopUp;
    private LinearLayout mLayout;
    private LayoutParams mParams;
    private LinearLayout mMainLayout;
    private WebView mWebView;


    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        mLayout = new LinearLayout(this);
        mMainLayout = new LinearLayout(this);

        mWebView = new WebView(this);
        mWebView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
        mWebView.getSettings().setSupportMultipleWindows(true);

        mWebView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient() {
            @Override
            public boolean onCreateWindow(WebView view, boolean dialog, boolean userGesture, Message resultMsg) {
                if (mPopUp != null && mPopUp.isShowing()) {
                    mPopUp.dismiss();
                    mPopUp = null;
                    return false;
                }
                WebView.WebViewTransport transport = (WebView.WebViewTransport) resultMsg.obj;
                final WebView popupWebView = new WebView(view.getContext());
                popupWebView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {
                    @Override
                    public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
                        android.util.Log.w(TAG, "popup webview ShouldOverride" + url);
                        return false;
                    }
                    @Override
                    public void onPageFinished(WebView view, String url) {
                        android.util.Log.w(TAG, "popup webview onPageFinished" + url);
                    }
                });
                popupWebView.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
                mLayout.addView(popupWebView);
                mPopUp = new PopupWindow(view.getContext());
                mPopUp.setContentView(mLayout);
                mPopUp.showAtLocation(mMainLayout, Gravity.BOTTOM, 0, 0);
                mPopUp.update(400,400,800,800);
                transport.setWebView(popupWebView);
                resultMsg.sendToTarget();
                return true;
            }
        });
        mWebView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient() {
            @Override
            public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
                Log.d(TAG, "ShouldOverrideUrlLoading main Webview" + url);
                return false;
            }
        });

        final String url = "https://output.jsbin.com/penade";
        String customHtml = "<html><body><h1>Hello, Test</h1>" +
                "<button type=\"button\" onclick=\"window.open('"+ url + "');\">" +
                "Clicking here to create a popup</button>" +
                "</body></html>";
        mWebView.loadData(customHtml, "text/html", "UTF-8");
        mParams = new LayoutParams(LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
                LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT);
        mLayout.setOrientation(LinearLayout.VERTICAL);
        mMainLayout.addView(mWebView, mParams);
        setContentView(mMainLayout);
    }
}

There's also the foolproof way: catch BadTokenException..

sure that will make the crash go away (which is better than crashing) but the user still can't select texts I think, because the selection handles' creation is just blocked.

Actually, this probably affects textView in a popup window, too. I will confirm tomorrow. Maybe Android will be willing to make a change to support popup window in a popup window.

Sidenote: I believe this should affect WebViews in Presentations as well (since a Presentation is a special version of a Dialog)?

I've tested selecting TextView inside a PopupWindow. You can't.
The code to disallow this is here:
https://cs.corp.google.com/android/frameworks/base/core/java/android/widget/Editor.java?rcl=9382c5a7e4f2e6b90d2fa0810a2074701483496f&l=611
The popup window's LayoutParams.type == WindowManager.LayoutParams.FIRST_SUB_WINDOW.

So at least we're no worse than TextViews on Android platform.

re #11: I'm not sure Dialogs are treated the same as PopupWindows.
Can you try and whip up a simple test app?

Yeah, I'll give it a go when I have time :)

So, what is the consensus here? Are we intending to do anything about this or will we just wait until the change from #3 is implemented?

make sure we don't crash and call it a day, probably

So that would mean catching BadTokenException? Could we miss other related crashes if we do so?

If we wrap it "closely" around the places where we try to make popup windows, then it's pretty much only going to catch the places where we don't have a parent window in our context, so it shouldn't be too bad. But I think Bo meant testing upfront the way hush noted Editor does in #12? (i.e. avoiding the call in the first place if we know we're in a situation that will throw)

not really, turns out catching BadTokenException is the only way to detect this edge case

Oh. Well, that should be okay if that's what must be done.

Alright, hush@ would you like to do this?

I think we can do something like #19 to just not crash on the popupwindow and reach "bug parity" with Android's TextView. We still can't bring up the selection handles, until we switch the selection handles' implementation or Android fixes the bug.

Okay I don't think there is anything to do. We already catch the exception and that's why we don't crash in NYC. I was probably testing using an old webview on M in the original report.

https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/content/public/android/java/src/org/chromium/content/browser/input/PopupTouchHandleDrawable.java?rcl=0&l=457