WebViews are not displayed in server mode

[johnpaliotta]

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

• VS Code Version: openvscode-server-v1.62.3
• OS Version: Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS

I am using vscode.window.createWebviewPanel to create a webview and display some static HTML. Everything works fine with the desktop version, but in the server version I get a blank document. To try to figure out what's going on I switched to the webview-sample (cat coding) and reproduced the problem

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Built the webview-sample using vsce package on windows
2. Moved the resultant .vsix file to linux
3. Downloaded the vscode-server from https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server/releases
4. Started the vscode-server, using ./server.sh
5. Connected to the server using Chrome (I tried Firefox too)
6. Installed the .vsix
7. Ran command: "Cat Coding: Start cat coding session"
8. Empty tab appears

[jeanp413]

@johnpaliotta I cannot reproduce, I'm on ubuntu 21.10. Do you see any relevant error in the dev tools console?

[johnpaliotta]

@jeanp413 thanks for the quick reply.
In the developer console I see these errors

I searched around a bit and it seems that a cause can be using http vs https, but I could not find a clear description on how to switch to https.

Since I am running the server on a Linux VM, I tried installing Chrome and then using http and localhost* to connect. This allow everything to work fine, so thanks for the tip about the developer console.

On the other hand I would still like to be able to connect from a remote machine so if anyone has info on how to use https in this context I would appreciate it.

[jeanp413]

I see, yeah for webviews to work you'll need https or localhost. For https to work on a remote machine you'll need to setup a reverse proxy (nginx or apache2), you can check this discussion to get started on how to configure a reverse proxy in apache2 #96 (reply in thread)

[johnpaliotta]

Ok will try to get that going tomorrow ... thanks again