Iced_webview

A library to embed Web views in iced applications

This library supports

• Blitz — Rust-native HTML/CSS renderer (Stylo + Taffy + Vello), modern CSS (flexbox, grid), no JS
• litehtml — lightweight CPU-based HTML/CSS rendering, no JS or navigation (good for static content like emails)

Compatibility

Requirements

• Rust 1.85+ (Blitz crates use edition 2024)

examples:

examples/embedded_webview

A simple example to showcase an embedded webview (uses the basic webview)

cargo run --example embedded_webview
# or with litehtml
cargo run --example embedded_webview --no-default-features --features litehtml

examples/multi_webview

A more advanced example that uses the advanced webview module and has two simultaneous webviews open

cargo run --example multi_webview

examples/email

Renders a table-based marketing email using litehtml — demonstrates static HTML rendering without a full browser engine

cargo run --example email --no-default-features --features litehtml

Known Issues

Neither engine is a full browser — there's no JavaScript, and rendering is CPU-based. Both are best suited for displaying static or semi-static HTML content.

Blitz

• No incremental rendering — the entire visible viewport is re-rasterized on every frame that needs updating (scroll, resize, resource load). Blitz is pre-alpha and doesn't yet support dirty-rect or partial repaint like Firefox/Chrome.
• No :hover CSS rendering — hover state is tracked internally (cursor changes work), but we skip the visual re-render for :hover styles to avoid the CPU cost. This matches litehtml's behaviour.
• No JavaScript — by design; Blitz is a CSS rendering engine, not a browser engine.
• Build weight — Stylo (Firefox's CSS engine) adds significant compile time on first build.

litehtml

• Limited CSS support — no flexbox, no grid, no CSS variables. Works well for table-based layouts and simple pages (emails, documentation).
• No :hover CSS rendering — cursor changes work, but hover styles are not visually applied.
• No JavaScript or navigation history — static rendering only.
• C++ dependency — requires clang/libclang for building litehtml-sys.

TODO

• Blitz incremental layout — blitz-dom has a feature-gated incremental flag that enables selective cache clearing and damage propagation in resolve(). Currently experimental (incomplete FC root detection, no tests), but once stabilized it would make re-layout after hover/resource loads much cheaper by only updating affected subtrees instead of the full tree.
• :hover CSS rendering — both engines skip the visual re-render for hover styles. With incremental layout + viewport-only rendering, it may become cheap enough to re-enable for Blitz.
• Async rendering — rendering currently blocks the main thread. Moving the paint_scene + render_to_buffer call to a background thread would keep the UI responsive during re-renders.
• Servo integration — a full Rust-native browser engine (HTML5, CSS3, JS) as a third engine option. Servo's embedding API (libservo) is stabilizing but not yet on crates.io.

Engine Comparison

Original developer: LegitCamper/iced_webview (Sawyer Bristol and others)