3 ms·

It's because they control the whole stack. FWIW, I'm currently finishing up an ActiveX wrapper for WebView2 so that it can be consumed in a way similar to the

by wila 5y ago

It's because they control the whole stack. FWIW, I'm currently finishing up an ActiveX wrapper for WebView2 so that it can be consumed in a way similar to the old IE WebBrowser control and so far I'm pretty impressed. To give you a basic idea. I'm running the control embedded and the WebView2 control consumes about 60MB after navigating to my own -mostly text- website. Browsing within that control to the page of the hacker news topic makes the RAM usage go up to 130MB. Navigating back to this hacker news comment page and the memory usage drops down to about 75MB. So yes, I'm impressed by how well it works. edit: Another huge advantage. Last week I upgraded MS Edge and WebView2 is also upgraded. So the control is kept up to date and not depending on an external dependency that might end up being a security nightmare. The control itself continues to work fine.

sofixa 5y ago
> : Another huge advantage. Last week I upgraded MS Edge and WebView2 is also upgraded. So the control is kept up to date and not depending on an external dependency that might end up being a security nightmare Or disadvantage if you look at it from the developer's point of view - they have zero control over the browser version, so if there's a bug, or lacking feature, or something deprecated, you're screwed.
- wila 5y ago
  It's a COM interface they can't deprecate without changing the interface. re. "zero control".. you can set a minimum version that you require for your application. If Microsoft creates a bug then yes, you might have an issue. But that counts for the whole stack anyways.
adzm 5y ago
> I'm currently finishing up an ActiveX wrapper for WebView2 so that it can be consumed in a way similar to the old IE WebBrowser control and so far I'm pretty impressed. To what extent are you maintaining compatibility? The old mshtml provides com bindings for pretty much everything. I'd be interested to see what you have if you end up releasing the code. I would love for the old Trident / mshtml / edgehtml engines to be made open.
- wila 5y ago
  Not very compatible with the old IE WebBrowser control I'm afraid. That was on my list of things to try, but it just isn't feasible. With mshtml you could directly access the DOM and do pretty much anything in there via its interface. With WebView2 there is no direct DOM access. You have access to what is running in the browser, but it is all via javascript. I'm building a bit on top now to get some basics to the developer without getting their hands dirty in javascript, but for Microsoft clearly the idea is to use javascript to manage the DOM. re. releasing the code. Sorry, it will be a commercial undertaking. I will release the control, but it won't be free.
- wila 5y ago
  FYI, I have released a Technical Preview here (1). The demo application is currently only in DataFlex, but I will add other programming languages for the demo later on. 1) https://antwise.com/Edge-WebView2-ActiveX.htm https://antwise.com/Edge-WebView2-ActiveX.htm

by wila 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

> : Another huge advantage. Last week I upgraded MS Edge and WebView2 is also upgraded. So the control is kept up to date and not depending on an external dependency that might end up being a security nightmare Or disadvantage if you look at it from the developer's point of view - they have zero control over the browser version, so if there's a bug, or lacking feature, or something deprecated, you're screwed.

wila 5y ago
It's a COM interface they can't deprecate without changing the interface. re. "zero control".. you can set a minimum version that you require for your application. If Microsoft creates a bug then yes, you might have an issue. But that counts for the whole stack anyways.

adzm 5y ago

> I'm currently finishing up an ActiveX wrapper for WebView2 so that it can be consumed in a way similar to the old IE WebBrowser control and so far I'm pretty impressed. To what extent are you maintaining compatibility? The old mshtml provides com bindings for pretty much everything. I'd be interested to see what you have if you end up releasing the code. I would love for the old Trident / mshtml / edgehtml engines to be made open.

wila 5y ago
Not very compatible with the old IE WebBrowser control I'm afraid. That was on my list of things to try, but it just isn't feasible. With mshtml you could directly access the DOM and do pretty much anything in there via its interface. With WebView2 there is no direct DOM access. You have access to what is running in the browser, but it is all via javascript. I'm building a bit on top now to get some basics to the developer without getting their hands dirty in javascript, but for Microsoft clearly the idea is to use javascript to manage the DOM. re. releasing the code. Sorry, it will be a commercial undertaking. I will release the control, but it won't be free.
wila 5y ago
FYI, I have released a Technical Preview here (1). The demo application is currently only in DataFlex, but I will add other programming languages for the demo later on. 1) https://antwise.com/Edge-WebView2-ActiveX.htm https://antwise.com/Edge-WebView2-ActiveX.htm