Update web browser coming with Fusion 360

[Anonymous]

Hey there,

I recently noticed that Fusion 360 comes with old web browsers (e.g. for Palettes used with the API, ...).

Fusion 360s browser version on my Windows 10 PC is Chrome 59.0 (from 2017)

Fusion 360s browser version on my MacOS Mojave is Safari 2.0 (from 2006)

In addition to that Fusion 360 uses OpenSSL 0.9.8 (from 2005, support end was 2015) on Mac as well and is not able to establish secure connections anymore. TLS v1.0 is no longer up to date!

Please update the Browsers coming with Fusion 360 to the current Versions (Safari 12.0.2+ and Chrome 72.0+) and OpenSSL to 1.1.1.

I also don't get why it comes with different browsers on different platforms. If it doesn't use the standard browser then why not providing the same browser on all platforms. 

The web browsers should not only be kept up to date because of security reasons. It is also hard to develop an Add-In by using far outdated versions of web browsers due to incompatibility issues. 

Thank you very much.

[TrippyLighting]

@brianrepp can you direct this to the appropriate team ?

This is important to those that develop AddIns and Fabi has developed quite a unique and nice addin!

It's called Customizable Content Center

[brianrepp]

Thanks Peter & Fabi - I'll pass this along to the appropriate team.  

[kris_berg]

Hi @Anonymous ,

We are working on project right now to update our web browser versions.  I can't give you an ETA on when it will be available yet, but should have a clearer idea in a couple weeks.  

Regarding why we have two different browsers, applications that release on the Mac App Store must use OS X webkit.  Since we release Fusion 360 on the Mac App Store we have to have two different implementations on Mac and Windows.

I don't have an answer for you right now on the OpenSSL version.  I will reply back to you directly when I have more information.

Thanks,

[JeromeBriot]

---

@kris_berg wrote:

I don't have an answer for you right now on the OpenSSL version.  I will reply back to you directly when I have more information.

Hi,

the outdated version of OpenSSL is linked to the version of Python distributed with Fusion 360:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-api-and-scripts/python-outdated-version-of-openssl-on-mac/...

The solution is to upgrade Python to version 3.6, but that is easier said than done. 

[Anonymous]

@kris_berg any new information yet?

[kris_berg]

Hi @Anonymous 

We are still evaluating how to proceed with the openSSL issue.  Unfortunately our expert in this area is on vacation this week.  We have two options:

• Move to a more recent version of Python. The downside with that is we have our own python code that would need to be updated so it would take longer to be released.  Also, for our development environment we use a more recent version of Python and even using that, we had to ensure python could find its certificates to achieve TLS 1.2 support on the Mac.  You will notice python.org mentions the install certificates.command  here .  I need to look into that more.
• Rebuild Python 3.5.3 with SSL 1.1.0.  According to this page in 3.5.3 Python added the ability to link it with SSL 1.1.0. 

When our expert comes back we will decide how we want to proceed.

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

@kris_berg @brianrepp 

Three weeks gone now. Is there already a planned update on the Browsers shipped with Fusion 360? Can't wait for it since my Add-In needs it very badly (at least for Mac)!

Is your expert back from vacation already? 

Maybe another question:

Is it possible to install plugins manually in the shipped browser? I would love to install the ReactJS tools for further web development of my Add-In.

[kris_berg]

Hi @Anonymous ,

The expert is back from vacation.  What we learned was that we do not build Python ourselves so we will need to learn how to do it before we can try building with SSL.  The person that would work on that is finishing up another project right now.

On the browser, we are making good progress on updating our technology.  We will need to ensure it works correctly with the API.  One big difference with the new technology is we can no longer support synchronous calls (the calling code waits until a value is returned).  

On your question below - I don't have an answer on that.  I can ask someone on Monday.

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

@kris_berg Thanks for you reply.

Another month gone now. Any new insights or already a release date of the changes during build?

I've read that you get rid of the Mac Appstore version. Maybe that's related?

Whats the current state? Can't wait to get news.

Did you find a solution to my previous question?

Thanks for the nice work so far!

Greets Fabi

[kris_berg]

Hi @Anonymous ,

We are making good progress on the browser update.  I don't have an ETA I can share yet, but the code is close to complete (including API access) .  We are also working to update to python 3.7.  We are running into some challenges so it has progressed slower than we would like, but we are working on it.

On your question regarding "Is it possible to install plugins manually in the shipped browser? I would love to install the ReactJS tools for further web development of my Add-In.".  I am not aware of a way to do that, but we will add it as a feature request.  

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

@kris_berg 

nice to hear there is some progress on the issue.

A feature request is nice and I hope it is not that hard to add it.

Anyways, another three weeks are gone! How is it going? Is there an ETA already?

I am sorry but I can't stress enough for the update!

PS: I get some emails of unhappy Mac users (of my Add-In) who would profit sooo much of the update!

[kris_berg]

Hi @Anonymous 

Thanks for checking in.  The latest news is that the web browser change would have been a breaking API change as we can no longer support synchronous calls, so we are creating a parallel interface and then will eventually deprecate the old.  The python change is sadly still ongoing.  That has been significantly harder than anticipated but we continue to work on it.

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

@kris_berg Any news so far?

I am still waiting for a fix. And it is not just me, but all users of my Add-In and the all other developers using the Pallette API.

Greets Fabi

[goyals]

Hi,

We have not switched to new browser by default at the moment but to allow add-in users to try new browser, we added an optional bool argument to  "add" method in Palettes class. By default it is false and setting to true will create palette control object with new browser. As mentioned by Kris with new browser we do not support synchronous call so some adjustment need to made both on add-in side and in javascript executed in palette control.

1. With old browser sendInfoToHTML method call behaves synchronously but with new browser, response is sent as part of HTML event with action value equal to 'response. So add-ins need to register for incomingFromHTMLEvent and check for action value equal to 'response' so its like response action word is reserved by Fusion.

2. To send the information from JS to Add-in. adsk.fusionSendData method is provided. This method now returns a promise object and add-ins need to provide resolve and reject function to get the response send by add-in.

This API is not added in to documentation but already available. Once we make the switch to new browser, we will update the documentation. Let us know in case you notice any issue.

One other news is We are going to upgrade Python version to 3.7.3 with next release of Fusion so You would be able to use  TLS 1.1 as well. Thanks. 

[Anonymous]

@goyals 

Thanks for the update!

I tested it and directly updated my Add-In. It seems working fine so far on both MacOS and Windows, except for minor bugs.

1. location forwarding or reloading is not working properly, e.g. with the following code it does not work

# reload the page with js
window.location.reload(false); 

<!-- my dynamic link to a login button-->
<a href="/api/login" className="btn btn-outline-success" role="button">Login</a>

I am forwarding this request to the Forge API to login the user using the following endpoint on the server side:

https://developer.api.autodesk.com/authentication/v1/authorize

Maybe it is some issue with the Browser security.

Other ref-links are loading very slow.

2. My javascript code loads faster then Fusion injects the window.adsk JS code. How does it work?

3. resizing the new Browser is causing a freeze and then it kills Fusion 360.

Could you please add a 'Forward' and 'Back' button right next to the 'Close' Button at the bottom. I know you can do it also with right click. But many users are not aware of that they can right click.

PS: you can test what I said with my Add-In. It will update automatically and is using the new Browser already.

The user-agent is Neutron/2.0.6258, for those who are interested. 

Which kind of Browser is the new Browser (A version of Chrome)? some more information would be helpful. It would be nice to load different development tools like React-Developer Tools or something else.

Thanks for the update!

Greets Fabi

[goyals]

1. We are using QtWebBrowser as new web browser for palette. Previously we were using Chromium on Windows and Mac OSX WebKit on Mac.

2. window.adsk is injected after page is loaded in palette.

3. I am not able to reproduce the crash on resizing of the palette.

We will investigate it further. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

This issue also seems to be related to use of older browser for Palettes on Mac :

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-support/update-web-browser-coming-with-fusion-360/m-p/8978...