Posts

I have been posting about using MSHTML to display HTML-based content in your Windows applications. Some of the reasons I started doing this in my own code include:

I don’t know how often someone would want to call a JavaScript (JS) function in the WebBrowser control from the host application. Since the host can control many, if not more, aspects of the HTML content externally using IDocHostUIHandler or the MSHTML DOM interfaces, it seems unnecessary to implement a method in JS and call that method from the host. But, if you need to for some reason, here’s how to do it:

Recently, I’ve had several discussions with other developers about UI frameworks. One of the more interesting outcomes is my new desire to create desktop applications using traditionally web-based frameworks. I know it sounds weird, but after looking at the current UI framework landscape and factoring in the latest directions in rich Internet applications, it may not be too crazy. People like Jon Udell and Adam Bosworth have spent considerable time discussing the subject. Currently, there are several possible UI frameworks to choose from for commercial, shrink-wrapped applications (it’s what I do):

My primary professional development language has been C++ for as long as I remember. It still is and I have no strong desire to move to something else. That also means that, many years ago, I embraced the Object Oriented Design (OOD) methodology.

We can’t discuss embedding WebBrowser in an application without also discussing IDocHostUIHandler. The IDocHostUIHandler (and IDocHostShowUI) interface is the standard method provided by Microsoft for customizing how WebBrowser works when hosted in an application. Some of the things you can use IDocHostUIHandler to do include:

Did you know that you can turn WebBrowser into a decent WYSIWYG HTML editor? It’s true and it’s relatively simple. There are actually two ways to turn on the editor mode: contentEditable markup attribute, and IHTMLDocument2::designMode method. Since we are talking about embedding WebBrowser in an application, the IHTMLDocument2::designMode method is the most typical choice.

In this post I wanted to cover some miscellaneous things you may want to do with your embedded WebBrowser. On its own, the IWebBrowser2 interface does not support doing much more than we already covered in previous posts. However, if you start using the MSHTML DOM interfaces, much more functionality is available. Here is a list of simple things you can implement without too much difficulty: