Is there any relatively easy way to insert a modern browser into a .NET application?
As far as I understand, the WebBrowser control is a wrapper for IE, which wouldn't be a problem except that it looks like it is a very old version of IE, with all that entails in terms of CSS screw-ups, potential security risks (if the rendering engine wasn't patched, can I really expect the zillion buffer overflow problems to be fixed?), and other issues.
I am using Visual Studio C# (express edition - does it make any difference here?)
I would like to integrate a good web browser in my applications. In some, I just use it to handle the user registration process, interface with some of my website's features and other things of that order, but I have another application in mind that will require more err... control.
I need:
I was thinking about Chrome, since it comes under the BSD license, but I would be just as happy with a recent version of IE.
As much as possible, I would like to keep things simple. The best would be if one could patch the existing WebBrowser control, which does already about 70% of what I need, but I don't think that's possible.
I have found an activeX control for Mozilla (http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/control.htm) but it looks like it's an old version, so it's not necessarily an improvement.
I am open to suggestions
This question is related to
c#
.net
winforms
webbrowser-control
Checkout CefSharp .Net bindings, a project I started a while back that thankfully got picked up by the community and turned into something wonderful.
The project wraps the Chromium Embedded Framework and has been used in a number of major projects including Rdio's Windows client, Facebook Messenger for Windows and Github for Windows.
It features browser controls for WPF and Winforms and has tons of features and extension points. Being based on Chromium it's blisteringly fast too.
Grab it from NuGet: Install-Package CefSharp.Wpf or Install-Package CefSharp.WinForms
Check out examples and give your thoughts/feedback/pull-requests: https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp
BSD Licensed
I know this isn't a 'replacement' WebBrowser control, but I was having some awful rendering issues whilst showing a page that was using BootStrap 3+ for layout etc, and then I found a post that suggested I use the following. Apparently, it's specific to IE and tells it to use the latest variation found on the client machine for rendering (so it won't use IE7, which I believe is the default).
So just put:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge" />
somewhere in the head part of your document.
Obviously, if it's not your document, this won't help - though I personally consider it to be a security hole if you're reading pages not created by yourself through the WebBrowser control - why not just use a web browser!
Chrome uses (a fork of) Webkit if you didn't know, which is also used by Safari. Here's a few questions that are of the same vein:
The webkit one isn't great as the other answer states, one version no longer works (the google code one) and the Mono one is experimental. It'd be nice if someone made the effort to make a decent .NET wrapper for it but it's not something anyone seems to want to do - which is surprising given it now has support for HTML5 and so many other features that the IE(8) engine lacks.
Update (2014)
There's new dual-licensed project that allows you embed Chrome into your .NET applications called Awesomium. It comes with a .NET api but requires quite a few hacks for rendering (the examples draw the browser window to a buffer, paint the buffer as an image and refresh on a timer).
I think this is the browser used by Origin in Battlefield 3.
Update (2016)
There is now DotnetBrowser, a commercial alternative to Awesomium. It's based off Chromium.
UPDATE 2020 JULY
Preview version of chromium based WebView 2 is released by the Microsoft. Now you can embed new Chromium Edge browser into a .NET application.
UPDATE 2018 MAY
If you're targeting application to run on Windows 10, then now you can embed Edge browser into your .NET application by using Windows Community Toolkit.
WPF Example:
Install Windows Community Toolkit Nuget Package
Install-Package Microsoft.Toolkit.Win32.UI.Controls
XAML Code
<Window
x:Class="WebViewTest.MainWindow"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:WPF="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Toolkit.Win32.UI.Controls.WPF;assembly=Microsoft.Toolkit.Win32.UI.Controls"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WebViewTest"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
Title="MainWindow"
Width="800"
Height="450"
mc:Ignorable="d">
<Grid>
<WPF:WebView x:Name="wvc" />
</Grid>
</Window>
CS Code:
public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
// You can also use the Source property here or in the WPF designer
wvc.Navigate(new Uri("https://www.microsoft.com"));
}
}
WinForms Example:
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
// You can also use the Source property here or in the designer
webView1.Navigate(new Uri("https://www.microsoft.com"));
}
}
Please refer to this link for more information.
Geckofx and Webkit.net were both promising at first, but they didn't keep up to date with Firefox and Chrome respectively while as Internet Explorer improved, so did the Webbrowser control, though it behaves like IE7 by default regardless of what IE version you have but that can be fixed by going into the registry and change it to IE9 allowing HTML5.
I've been testing alternatives to C# Web browser component for few days now and here is my list:
1. Using newer IE versions 8,9:
Web Browser component is IE7 not IE8? How to change this?
Pros:
Cons:
This doesn't require much work and you can get some HTML5 and CSS3 support although IE9 lacks some of best CSS3 and HTML5 features. But I'm sure you could get IE10 running same way. The problem would be that target system would have to have IE10 installed, and since is still in preview on Windows 7 I would suggest against it.
OpenWebKitSharp is a .net wrapper for the webkit engine based on the WebKit.NET 0.5 project. WebKit is a layout engine used by Chrome/Safari
Pros:
Cons:
OpenWebKit is quite nice although many features are not yet implemented, I experienced few issues using it with visual studio which throws null object reference here and then in design mode, there are some js problems. Everyone using it will almost immediately notice js alert does nothing. Events like mouseup,mousedown... etc. doesn't work, js drag and drop is buggy and so on..
I also had some difficulties installing it since it requires specific version of VC redistributable installed, so after exception I looked at event log, found version of VC and installed it.
3. GeckoFX
Pros:
Cons:
GeckoFX is a cross platform Webrowser control for embedding into WinForms Applications. This can be used with .NET on Windows and with mono on Linux. Gecko is a layout engine used by Firefox.
I bumped into few information that GeckoFX is not actively developed which is not true, of course it's always one or two versions behind of Firefox but that is normal, I was really impressed by activity and the control itself. It does everything I needed, but I needed some time to get it running, here's a little tutorial to get it running:
If your really must use Chrome, take a look at this product called Awesomium, it's free for non-commercial projects, but license is few thousand dollars for commercial.
I had the same problem, the WebBrowser was using an old version of IE, with some googling I came across the following code that makes a change into registry and makes the WebBrowser to use the lastest IE version possible:
public enum BrowserEmulationVersion
{
Default = 0,
Version7 = 7000,
Version8 = 8000,
Version8Standards = 8888,
Version9 = 9000,
Version9Standards = 9999,
Version10 = 10000,
Version10Standards = 10001,
Version11 = 11000,
Version11Edge = 11001
}
public static class WBEmulator
{
private const string InternetExplorerRootKey = @"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer";
public static int GetInternetExplorerMajorVersion()
{
int result;
result = 0;
try
{
RegistryKey key;
key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(InternetExplorerRootKey);
if (key != null)
{
object value;
value = key.GetValue("svcVersion", null) ?? key.GetValue("Version", null);
if (value != null)
{
string version;
int separator;
version = value.ToString();
separator = version.IndexOf('.');
if (separator != -1)
{
int.TryParse(version.Substring(0, separator), out result);
}
}
}
}
catch (SecurityException)
{
// The user does not have the permissions required to read from the registry key.
}
catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
{
// The user does not have the necessary registry rights.
}
return result;
}
private const string BrowserEmulationKey = InternetExplorerRootKey + @"\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION";
public static BrowserEmulationVersion GetBrowserEmulationVersion()
{
BrowserEmulationVersion result;
result = BrowserEmulationVersion.Default;
try
{
RegistryKey key;
key = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(BrowserEmulationKey, true);
if (key != null)
{
string programName;
object value;
programName = Path.GetFileName(Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()[0]);
value = key.GetValue(programName, null);
if (value != null)
{
result = (BrowserEmulationVersion)Convert.ToInt32(value);
}
}
}
catch (SecurityException)
{
// The user does not have the permissions required to read from the registry key.
}
catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
{
// The user does not have the necessary registry rights.
}
return result;
}
public static bool SetBrowserEmulationVersion(BrowserEmulationVersion browserEmulationVersion)
{
bool result;
result = false;
try
{
RegistryKey key;
key = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(BrowserEmulationKey, true);
if (key != null)
{
string programName;
programName = Path.GetFileName(Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()[0]);
if (browserEmulationVersion != BrowserEmulationVersion.Default)
{
// if it's a valid value, update or create the value
key.SetValue(programName, (int)browserEmulationVersion, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
}
else
{
// otherwise, remove the existing value
key.DeleteValue(programName, false);
}
result = true;
}
}
catch (SecurityException)
{
// The user does not have the permissions required to read from the registry key.
}
catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
{
// The user does not have the necessary registry rights.
}
return result;
}
public static bool SetBrowserEmulationVersion()
{
int ieVersion;
BrowserEmulationVersion emulationCode;
ieVersion = GetInternetExplorerMajorVersion();
if (ieVersion >= 11)
{
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version11;
}
else
{
switch (ieVersion)
{
case 10:
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version10;
break;
case 9:
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version9;
break;
case 8:
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version8;
break;
default:
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version7;
break;
}
}
return SetBrowserEmulationVersion(emulationCode);
}
public static bool IsBrowserEmulationSet()
{
return GetBrowserEmulationVersion() != BrowserEmulationVersion.Default;
}
}
You just need to create a class and put this code in it, then run the following code when the program starts:
if (!WBEmulator.IsBrowserEmulationSet())
{
WBEmulator.SetBrowserEmulationVersion();
}
VB.NET:
Imports Microsoft.Win32
Imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Linq
Imports System.Security
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Threading.Tasks
Public Enum BrowserEmulationVersion
[Default] = 0
Version7 = 7000
Version8 = 8000
Version8Standards = 8888
Version9 = 9000
Version9Standards = 9999
Version10 = 10000
Version10Standards = 10001
Version11 = 11000
Version11Edge = 11001
End Enum
Public Class WBEmulator
Private Const InternetExplorerRootKey As String = "Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer"
Public Shared Function GetInternetExplorerMajorVersion() As Integer
Dim result As Integer
result = 0
Try
Dim key As RegistryKey
key = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(InternetExplorerRootKey)
If key IsNot Nothing Then
Dim value As Object = If(key.GetValue("svcVersion", Nothing), key.GetValue("Version", Nothing))
Dim Version As String
Dim separator As Integer
Version = value.ToString()
separator = Version.IndexOf(".")
If separator <> -1 Then
Integer.TryParse(Version.Substring(0, separator), result)
End If
End If
Catch ex As SecurityException
'The user does Not have the permissions required to read from the registry key.
Catch ex As UnauthorizedAccessException
'The user does Not have the necessary registry rights.
Catch
End Try
GetInternetExplorerMajorVersion = result
End Function
Private Const BrowserEmulationKey = InternetExplorerRootKey + "\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION"
Public Shared Function GetBrowserEmulationVersion() As BrowserEmulationVersion
Dim result As BrowserEmulationVersion
result = BrowserEmulationVersion.Default
Try
Dim key As RegistryKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(BrowserEmulationKey, True)
If key IsNot Nothing Then
Dim programName As String
Dim value As Object
programName = Path.GetFileName(Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()(0))
value = key.GetValue(programName, Nothing)
If value IsNot Nothing Then
result = CType(Convert.ToInt32(value), BrowserEmulationVersion)
End If
End If
Catch ex As SecurityException
'The user does Not have the permissions required to read from the registry key.
Catch ex As UnauthorizedAccessException
'The user does Not have the necessary registry rights.
Catch
End Try
GetBrowserEmulationVersion = result
End Function
Public Shared Function SetBrowserEmulationVersion(BEVersion As BrowserEmulationVersion) As Boolean
Dim result As Boolean = False
Try
Dim key As RegistryKey = Registry.CurrentUser.OpenSubKey(BrowserEmulationKey, True)
If key IsNot Nothing Then
Dim programName As String = Path.GetFileName(Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()(0))
If BEVersion <> BrowserEmulationVersion.Default Then
'if it's a valid value, update or create the value
key.SetValue(programName, CType(BEVersion, Integer), RegistryValueKind.DWord)
Else
'otherwise, remove the existing value
key.DeleteValue(programName, False)
End If
result = True
End If
Catch ex As SecurityException
' The user does Not have the permissions required to read from the registry key.
Catch ex As UnauthorizedAccessException
' The user does Not have the necessary registry rights.
End Try
SetBrowserEmulationVersion = result
End Function
Public Shared Function SetBrowserEmulationVersion() As Boolean
Dim ieVersion As Integer
Dim emulationCode As BrowserEmulationVersion
ieVersion = GetInternetExplorerMajorVersion()
If ieVersion >= 11 Then
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version11
Else
Select Case ieVersion
Case 10
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version10
Case 9
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version9
Case 8
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version8
Case Else
emulationCode = BrowserEmulationVersion.Version7
End Select
End If
SetBrowserEmulationVersion = SetBrowserEmulationVersion(emulationCode)
End Function
Public Shared Function IsBrowserEmulationSet() As Boolean
IsBrowserEmulationSet = GetBrowserEmulationVersion() <> BrowserEmulationVersion.Default
End Function
End Class
You may use it like:
If Not WBEmulator.IsBrowserEmulationSet() Then
WBEmulator.SetBrowserEmulationVersion()
End If
You can use registry to set IE version for webbrowser control. Go to: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION and add "yourApplicationName.exe" with value of browser_emulation To see value of browser_emulation, refer link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330730%28VS.85%29.aspx#browser_emulation
Source: Stackoverflow.com