In 2019 Microsoft announced Win32 preview of WebViewControl powered by the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge. To demonstrate the new WebView’s capabilities, Microsoft built a sample browser app using the WebView2 APIs. The intent was to develop a rich sample that benefits other developers building on top of WebView2, and to provide direct feedback to the rest of the WebView2 team from first-hand app-building experience. The sample features an array of functionalities, such as navigation, searching from the address bar, tabs, favorites, history, and verifying a secure connection. Below are some of links which provide information about the demonstration.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/hosting/webview2
We have done prototype to host the WebView2Control in WPF. Below are the requisites and Steps to run the WPF prototype.
- Microsoft Edge (Chromium) Dev Channel - Latest installed on a supported OS.
- Visual Studio - 2019 with C++ support installed.
- Microsoft.Web.WebView2 - Latest SDK ( Nuget Package )
- Microsoft.Windows.ImplementationLibrary - Latest SDK ( Nuget Package )
- After performing all prerequisites, clone all Prototypes from https://github.com/VijayanRamachandran/WebView2.git
- Execute WPFHostWindow.exe available in respective bin folder.
| Folder | Information |
|---|---|
| WebView2Browser-WithoutToolbar-Dll | C++ DLL which wraps call to WebView2 API's |
| WebView2BrowserWrapper | C# Wrapper |
| WPFHostWindow - Html - Table | WPF Exe which hosts WebView2 and Renders Html Table with Hardcoded Data |
| WPFHostWindow - Html-Table - DisableDevTools | WPF Exe which hosts WebView2 and renders static HTML table and disables DevTools using WebView2 provided API |
| WPFHostWindow - Html-Table - PostScript | WPF Exe which hosts WebView2 with HTML5 Canvas and renders 2D Image by Posting Script to WebView2. |
| WPFHostWindow - Html-Table - UrlNavigation | WPF Exe which hosts WebView2 and renders static HTML Table upon button click |
| WPFHostWindow - KeyBoard-Tab | WPF Exe which hosts some WPF Controls and WebView2 Control to check the TAB Key Interaction ( Focus ) |
| WPFHostWindow - Popup | WPF Exe which hosts Modal WPF Window which renders PDF in WebView2 Control |
| WPFHostWindow - Pdf | WPF Exe which hosts WebView2 and PDF is loaded to WebView2. |
| WPFHostWindow - TwoControls | WPF Exe which hosts Multiple WebView2. |
As of now, In C++ DLL ( WebView2Browser-WithoutToolbar-Dll, BrowserWindow.h ) we can't have any member variable of type Microsoft::WRL::ComPtr in the header file while we export the class with __declspec( dllexport ).
To overcome this, we made all member variable which requries Microsoft::WRL::ComPtr< >, as global variable in BrowserWindow.cpp and in Tab.cpp
With this workaround prototypes are working as expected, but we need a fix for it.
As we don't have release Nuget Package for WebView2 and its dependencies, currently we evaulated the performance of rendering a page in WebView2 with Debug X64 version of our C++, C# Wrapper and WPF Application. Because of this we are observing a drastic performance dropdown in rendering a page ( Refer Page 6 and 7 in WebView2hosting.pdf )
If prototypes doesnt render HTML as expected in WPF, It can be due to Nuget Version of Microsoft.Web.WebView2, Microsoft.Windows.ImplementationLibrary and Microsoft Edge Chromium.
Request you to install below stable version instead of latest.
Microsoft.Web.WebView2 - V0.8.270
Microsoft.Windows.ImplementationLibrary - V1.0.190716.2
Microsoft Edge Chromium - 79.0.309.43