HTML Widget ContentType not working

Version: 1.4.18.0

Frequency: Consistently

Severity: Blocker

Context:
We have an upcoming product that adds a custom widget entry to the activities page with an HTML view to view and launch missions, and communicate with our API. This works fine in 2020, however in 2024 we are noticing that using the HTML ContentType on a widget doesn’t do anything.

Bug description:
In MSFS2020, we are able to define a custom widget entry in the activities menu by creating a file named WidgetsActivities.xml under a base Widgets folder, with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="Widget" version="1,0">
    <Filename>WidgetsActivities.XML</Filename>
    <Title>ACTIVITIES</Title>
    <Widgets.WidgetPage>
        <PageSize>3;1</PageSize>
        <WidgetDefinition>
            <PosAndSize>3;1;1;1</PosAndSize>
            <ContentPage>
                <ContentType>HTML</ContentType>
                <ContentURL>coui://html_ui/Pages/Test/Activity/CustomActivity.html</ContentURL>
                <ContentTag>custom-activity</ContentTag>
                <Title>Custom Activity</Title>
                <Image>vfs://widgets/Images/TestImage.jpg</Image>
                <ContentDisplay>EXPANDABLE</ContentDisplay>
                <DisplayStyle>FULLSCREEN</DisplayStyle>
                <ButtonEvent>VIEW_CONTENT</ButtonEvent>
            </ContentPage>
        </WidgetDefinition>
    </Widgets.WidgetPage>
</SimBase.Document>

To make this work in 2024, we needed to change the file name to WidgetsActivitiesSR.xml. The entry shows up properly in the activities page, however clicking on it doesn’t do anything.

I see a few other usages of the HTML type in 2024, however those widget pages don’t actually seem to be used anywhere. Is this type considered deprecated, or is this just broken? Any guidance would be great, as this is blocking our development for 2024.

2 Likes