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Changelog

0.4.0

A deliberately breaking release. Every break is covered, with what to do about it, in the migration guide.

Breaking

  • Python 3.14 is the floor. Wheels are stable-ABI (abi3-py314), one per platform; 3.11–3.13 are no longer supported, and free-threaded builds cannot install Dry until abi3t.
  • The JavaScript surface is namespaced under window.dry. window.api, window.minimize, window.toggleMaximize, window.close, window.drag and window.resize move under it; window.ipcCallback and window.ipcStore are gone from the public surface. window.close, window.resizeTo and window.resizeBy are the browser’s own again.
  • Content is explicit. wv.content and its sniffing are replaced by three mutually exclusive modes: html, url and root. Declaring two raises; declaring none raises at run(). There is no single-file mode and no built-in placeholder page.
  • Webview(...) takes keyword arguments, and assigning an unknown attribute raises. Settings read while the window is built raise if assigned after run(), naming the setting.
  • An App id decides where data lives, replacing a folder derived from the window title under the temporary directory. Cookies, local storage and cache move to the OS application-data directory, and existing sessions do not carry over. title is now cosmetic.
  • The Bridge contract is the JSON data model, in both directions. set, frozenset, bytes and bytearray raise; integers beyond ±2**53, NaN and Infinity raise; booleans arrive as booleans rather than as 1 and 0; dictionary keys are coerced to strings as json.dumps coerces them.
  • size and min_size are logical pixels, so a window on a scaled display opens at the size it declares rather than at that size divided by the scale factor.
  • A drag region drags its whole subtree. Interactive elements inside one need data-no-drag-region.
  • Failures are exceptions and log records. DryError, WebviewError, BridgeError and PanicError replace printed diagnostics and an aborting panic; Dry writes nothing to stdout or stderr, logging instead to dry, dry.webview and dry.bridge.
  • Api entries must be callable, checked before the window opens, and a Call’s arguments are checked against the callable’s declared annotations before it runs.
  • Callbacks run off the window’s thread and concurrently, so state shared between them must be thread-safe.

Added

  • Events in both directions: wv.on, wv.off, wv.emit and wv.eval_js in Python; window.dry.on, off and emit in the frontend.
  • Window Events under reserved window: names — maximized, unmaximized, minimized, restored, hidden, shown, focused, blurred, resized, moved, close-requested — delivered on the same bus to both sides, and fired for OS-initiated changes as much as for library-initiated ones.
  • Runtime window control. title, size, min_size, decorations and icon_path now apply to the open window instead of only changing a stored value, and position, visible, maximized, minimized and fullscreen join them as properties of a window on screen, raising a RuntimeError naming the property before run(). Every change is announced through the window Events exactly as a change the user made.
  • A state query on both sides: wv.state() returns a WindowState NamedTuple, and await window.dry.state() resolves the same reading in the frontend, for a listener or a page that has observed no change yet.
  • A Root: a local directory served over an internal protocol so relative assets resolve, with per-extension content types, index.html for directories, 403 for a path escaping the Root and 404 for a missing file.
  • A close hook: on_close, asked on every route in, able to refuse a close by returning False, followed by an ordered shutdown that drains in-flight Calls and runs atexit handlers.
  • A default= hook, the one json.dumps(default=...) takes, for converting your own types on the way out.
  • data-no-drag-region, opting an element and its subtree out of a drag region.
  • macOS support, built and tested in CI alongside Windows, including resize edges on an undecorated window, which tao does not support natively.
  • A documentation site, and a README that is a README again.

Fixed

  • run() no longer holds the GIL, so Python threads keep running for the life of the window. A local server in a threading.Thread works.
  • A failed navigation is diagnosed and reported on dry.webview instead of leaving a blank window with no explanation.
  • A localfile:// request no longer ignores its path and answers with a content type that is not a media type.
  • A window declared 800×600 opens at that apparent size on a display of any scale factor.

Known gaps

  • The window-size fix above was verified on macOS across a real scale change, dragging between displays at backingScaleFactor 2.0 and 1.0. The scenario originally reported — Windows at 100% and 150% — has not been reproduced, because a CI runner has a single display at 100% where logical and physical pixels are indistinguishable. Reports from Windows are welcome.
  • On macOS, resize edges are drawn by Dry rather than the platform, because tao’s drag_resize_window is unimplemented there. A window built decorated and undecorated at runtime never draws them.

Releases before 0.4.0 predate this changelog. Their history is in the commit log.