So I tried the solution for the keyboard in chat screens offered by the ionic team in the link below:
I tried the latest release of this plugin - as of today 1.1.3 - with Ionic 2.2.1, followed instructions in the github repo, added the code below and removed ionic-plugin-keyboard (I assumed this is what @manucorporat meant in his comment) in the thread in the link - did the npm install for the plugin, built the App and tried it.
On iOS simulator with iOS version 10+ and it worked well as expected with no problems and no crashing. I still have to try it on a real phone (previously my app crashed when using the solution here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36706398/in-ionic-2-how-to-float-an-element-above-the-keyboard-when-the-keyboard-shows/36804830#36804830 )
A tip for the keyboard disappearing, add this to the button
(mousedown)="$event.preventDefault()"
The config.xml included
<feature name="CDVWKWebViewEngine">
<param name="ios-package" value="CDVWKWebViewEngine"/>
</feature>
<plugin name="cordova-plugin-wkwebview-engine" spec="~1.1.3"/>
<plugin name="cordova-plugin-keyboard" spec="https://github.com/ionic-team/cordova-plugin-keyboard"/>
<allow-navigation href="http://localhost:8080/*"/>
I have three questions, if anyone can help:
1- Will things continue to work normally on Android after removing the ionic-plugin-keyboard?
2- Is this <allow-navigation href="http://localhost:8080/*"/> correct? with localhost:8080 ?
3- Should I remove this code below from the config.xml
<feature name="Keyboard">
<param name="ios-package" onload="true" value="IonicKeyboard"/>
</feature>