Dear community members,

UPDATE: I made an attempt in CefSharp and could create a working WinForms application. However, as for WebView2, I failed to package CefSharp in a plugin.

Some guidance on how to use WebView2, CefSharp or any other web browser integration which is more modern than the Webbrowser control implementing IE would be welcome.

My first impression is that packaging a plugin with CefSharp would make the plugin quite heavy (several megabytes).

Thanks in advance for your support.

Regards,

Laurent

Hi Laurent Pierret,

We successfully implemented the CefSharp chromium browser with the project Reports Viewer Plus.  Make reference to the plugin manifest to understand what is required to be packaged with the plugin.

https://github.com/RWS/Sdl-Community/blob/master/Reports.Viewer/Reports.Viewer/pluginpackage.manifest.xml

Dear Patrick Andrew Hartnett,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I already had a look at the Report Viewer in Github and still did not manage to make CefSharp work in my plugin. I was going through all steps again to describe them here when I noticed that the package for WPF (used in Report Viewer) is slightly different from the one for Winforms that I want to use. After noticing this and combining it with other information found here and here, I finally managed to use CefSharp as browser in my plugin.

Here are the steps I followed, in case it is of any use for other community members:

1. Add CefSharp.WinForms (version 96.0.170) NuGet package to the project
2. Change pluginmanifest and included the following references (this is based on what is used in Reports Viewer + other references which were missing when running the plugin for the first time). It might be that all references are not required:

<Include>
	<File>CefSharp.WinForms.dll</File>
	<File>CefSharp.Core.dll</File>

	<File>x86\CefSharp.dll</File>
	<File>x86\CefSharp.Core.Runtime.dll</File>
	<File>x86\CefSharp.BrowserSubprocess.Core.dll</File>
	<File>x86\CefSharp.BrowserSubprocess.exe</File>

	<File>x86\chrome_elf.dll</File>
	<File>x86\libcef.dll</File>
	<File>x86\icudtl.dat</File>
	<File>x86\libEGL.dll</File>
	<File>x86\libGLESv2.dll</File>

	<File>x86\chrome_100_percent.pak</File>
	<File>x86\chrome_200_percent.pak</File>

	<File>x86\snapshot_blob.bin</File>
	<File>x86\v8_context_snapshot.bin</File>

	<File>x86\resources.pak</File>
	<File>x86\d3dcompiler_47.dll</File>
	<File>x86\CefSharp.Core.dll</File>
	<File>x86\locales\en-US.pak</File>
</Include>

namespace CefSharpPlugin
{
    public partial class TestForm : Form
    {
        public ChromiumWebBrowser _chromiumBrowser;

        public TestForm()
        {
            CefRuntime.SubscribeAnyCpuAssemblyResolver();

            InitializeComponent();

            InitializeCefSharp();
        }

        [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.NoInlining)]
        private void InitializeCefSharp()
        {
            var settings = new CefSettings();
            settings.BrowserSubprocessPath = Path.Combine(Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location), @"x86\CefSharp.BrowserSubprocess.exe");

            Cef.Initialize(settings, performDependencyCheck: false, browserProcessHandler: null);

            _chromiumBrowser = new ChromiumWebBrowser(WebSiteURLasString);
            this.Controls.Add(_chromiumBrowser);
            _chromiumBrowser.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
        }

        private void TestForm_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
        {
            Cef.Shutdown();
        }
    }
}

Subscribe to any CPU should be done before any component is initialized. Important is also to set the Browser Suprocess Path. I set the performDependencyCheck to false because it raised an error in debugging.

I don't know if it is the best way to do it but at least it worked for me.

Nevertheless, I am still not 100% convinced by CefSharp. My plugin size is over a 130MB and accessing DOM objects does not look straightforward. If anyone has experience with Webview2, which implementation and use seems closer to the one of the old Webbrowser control, I am still interested.

Thanks.

Laurent

Hi Laurent,

I have struggled a bit with this as well. One thing that took me a while to find out is that you need to include WebView2Loader.dll in the package. Could this be what you are missing?

Mikael

HI Mikael,

My plugin package does not include the WebView2Loader.dll. And as you can see from the message above, it works without it.

Laurent

Hi Laurent,

Sorry, I somehow got the impression that you only managed to get CefSharp to work but not WebView2. If you indeed got WebView2 to work in your plugin without WebView2Loader.dll I guess all is good.

But fact remains, my plugin where I use WebView2 absolutely does not work without including WebView2Loader.dll in the package and perhaps it can be of help for someone else trying to use WebView2 in a Studio plugin. 

Mikael

Dear Mikael,

My bad, you are right. I was too quick when reading your message.

I had tried with the WebView2Loader.dll but it did not work for me. If you managed to make WebView2 work, I am really interested. As mentioned above, I am not 100% convinced by CefSharp. Moreover, it is really heavy!

Regards, Laurent

Hi Laurent,

As far as I can recall, once I had a working Windows Forms application with WebView2 there were only two things I had to do before I got it working in the Studio plugin:

- Include WebView2Loader.dll

- Provide a userDataFolder with read/write access in the call to CoreWebView2Environment.CreateAsync(). The default data folder, if I understand it correctly, will be the Studio installation folder to which the plugin does not have write access. 

Mikael 

Dear Mikael,

Thank you, I have a closer look when I have some time. However, if the Studio installation needs to have read-write access, I will not be able to change this.

Regards,

Laurent

Thanks to Mikael Weiner, I have managed to use WebView2 in a Studio plugin. The error I made was that I dropped the WebView2 control from the Visual Studio toolbox. The control was trying to create the user data folder in the default location, probably in the installation folder of Studio, which cannot be written. The solution is to add the webView2 control when initializing the form. This enables to define the location of the user data folder.

See here for an example: github.com/.../297