A hacky little demo project to illustrate how HTML select (aka drop down) elements for WebView instances created via a Service Context rather than an Activity cause an application raise an Exception that can't be caught, thus leading to the application being closed.

This table illustrates when this issue occurs:

Note: HTML select single elements display fine on tablets because the items are displayed as part of the page's HTML like so:

Phones display either HTML select types, and tablets displaying HTML select multiple elements have issues because WebView (attempts) to display the contents via a Dialog, which can't be created from a Service without the Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK flag being passed in.

Logcat of this issue is here.

1. WebChromeClient contains functions such as onJsAlert() and onJsConfirm() that applications using WebView can override and display in a manner they see fit. It seems reasonable that a onHtmlSelectSingle(), onHtmlSelectMultiple() or similiar type functions might be added so 3rd party applications can handle this behavior in the same manner.
2. WebView/Chromium is configured to check the Context that created itself is a Service or Activity. If the owner is a Service, Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK could be added to the Dialog that will be spawned so it may display without raising an Exception.
3. An API function be added so that WebView instances can be configured to behave as they do on tablets, and force such that when a HTML select is clicked, the contents are rendered as part of the page itself rather than via a Dialog. This solution would also require tablets to render HTML select multiple elements via this embedded rendering rather than falling back to a Dialog.

It's a giant hack that serves only to illustrate the problem described above. MainActivity spawns MainService. MainService creates a WebView using its Context. This WebView is then hackily added to MainActivity's layout. https://s3.amazonaws.com/linkbubble/test_page.html is loaded, which contains HTML select elements that when clicked illustrate the issue (as per the table above).