Options for embedding Chromium instead of IE WebBrowser control with WPF C

Question

Updated for 2020  I ve linked my article where I compare the memory footprints of different approaches to hosting HTML WebView in a basic Windows Desktop application   MSEdge WebView2 WPF Chromely CefSharp Electron v10 Legacy IE11 WebBrowser WPF    Internet Explorer-based WPF WebBrowser control suffers from some keyboard and focus issues and memory leak issues  As an alternative solution to these problems  we re considering available options for hosting Chromium instead of WebBrowser control in our WPF C  project based around HTML editing  Similar questions have been asked here previously  I ve read the answers and done my own research  but I hope to obtain some more feedback from people who have actually used any of the following options in production-quality projects  Awesomium and Awesomium NET It looks very appropriate  but I don t like the fact the project is not open-source and the full source is not easily available  Also  it might be an overkill for our project  as off-screen rendering is not something we really depend on  Chromium Embedded Framework  CEF  and  NET bindings for CEF This is probably the best option currently available  The project seems to be alive and active  being currently in sync with Chrome v27  CEF3 uses Chrome multi-process architecture  It also looks like Adobe is giving it some endorsement  Google s Chrome Frame While the original purpose of it was to be an HTML5 plugin for IE and Firefox  it actually works as standalone ActiveX control too  so I could wrap it for use with WPF  It exposes a sufficient API for interaction with the inner web page  onmessage  addEventListener removeEventListener  postMessage   I m aware Google is to discontinue Chrome Frame  but I assume the sources will remain in Chromium repository  It should not be difficult to update it with the latest Chromium code as we go  and we would have full control over this  WebKit  NET wrapper Not exactly Chromium-based and doesn t use V8 engine  so it is not really an option  Is there any other option I might have overlooked  I would greatly appreciate if someone shared her his experience with any of the above options for a real-life  production-quality WPF project  Did you have any integration  licensing  or deployment implications  Thank you   EDITED  I d also like to thank artlung for giving this question a boost by providing a generous bounty offer

User · Answer

I have used Awesomium NET  Although I don t like the fact that it s not open-source  and also the fact that it uses a pretty old Webkit rendering engine  it is really easy to use  That s about the only endorsement I can give it

User · Answer

Here is another one   http   www essentialobjects com Products WebBrowser Default aspx  This one is also based on the latest Chrome engine but it s much easier to use than CEF  It s a single  NET dll that you can simply reference and use

User · Answer

We had exactly the same challenge some time ago  We wanted to go with CEF3 open source library which is WPF-based and supports  NET 3 5  Firstly  the author of CEF himself listed binding for different languages here  Secondly  we went ahead with open source  NET CEF3 binding which is called Xilium CefGlue and had a good success with it  In cases where something is not working as you d expect  author usually very responsive to the issues opened in build-in bitbucket tracker So far it has served us well  Author updates his library to support latest CEF3 releases and bug fixes on regular bases

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UPDATE 2018 MAY   Alternatively  you can embed Edge browser  but only targetting windows 10   Here is the solution

User · Answer

I had same issue with my WPF RSS reader  I originally went with Awesomium  I think version 1 6  Awesomium is great  You get a lot of control for caching  images and HTML content   JavaScript execution  intercepting downloads and so forth  It s also super fast  The process isolation means when browser crashes it does not crash the app   But it s also heavy  even release build adds about 10-15mb  can t remember exact number  and hence a slight start-up penalty  I then realized  only problem I had with IE browser control was that it would throw the JavaScript errors every now and again  But that was fixed with the following snippet   I hardly used my app on XP or Vista but on Win 7 and above it never crashed  at least not because I used IE browser control   IOleServiceProvider sp   browser Document as IOleServiceProvider  if  sp    null        IID IWebBrowserApp   new Guid  0002DF05-0000-0000-C000-000000000046        Guid IID IWebBrowser2   new Guid  D30C1661-CDAF-11d0-8A3E-00C04FC9E26E         webBrowser      sp QueryService ref IID IWebBrowserApp  ref IID IWebBrowser2  out webBrowser       if  webBrowser    null                webBrowser GetType   InvokeMember  Silent                    BindingFlags Instance   BindingFlags Public   BindingFlags PutDispProperty  null  webBrowser  new object     silent

User · Answer

You ve already listed the most notable solutions for embedding Chromium  CEF  Chrome Frame  Awesomium   There aren t any more projects that matter    There is still the Berkelium project  see Berkelium Sharp and Berkelium Managed   but it emebeds an old version of Chromium    CEF is your best bet - it s fully open source and frequently updated  It s the only option that allows you to embed the latest version of Chromium  Now that Per Lundberg is actively working on porting CEF 3 to CefSharp  this is the best option for the future  There is also Xilium CefGlue  but this one provides a low level API for CEF  it binds to the C API of CEF  CefSharp on the other hand binds to the C   API of CEF   Adobe is not the only major player using CEF  see other notable applications using CEF on the CEF wikipedia page   Updating Chrome Frame is pointless since the project has been retired

User · Answer

Microsoft is releasing the  Microsoft Edge WebView2  WPF control that will get us a great  free option for embedding Chromium across Windows 10  Windows 8 1  or Windows 7  It is available via Nuget as the package Microsoft Web WebView2

[c#] Options for embedding Chromium instead of IE WebBrowser control with WPF/C#

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