Reusing the WebBrowser Control

Reusing the WebBrowser Control


The WebBrowser control adds browsing, document viewing, and data downloading capabilities to your applications. Applications using this control will allow the user to browse sites on the Internet's World Wide Web, as well as folders in the local file system and on a network. The WebBrowser control supports Web browsing through both point-and-click hyperlinking and Uniform Resource Locator (URL) navigation. The control maintains a history list that allows the user to browse forward and backward through previously browsed sites, folders, and documents.

The actual parsing and rendering of the HTML documents in the WebBrowser control is handled by the Mshtml.dll component of Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0. The MSHTML component is an Active Document (also known as an OLE document object) that provides support for parsing and rendering with the Dynamic HTML object model, as well as for hosting ActiveX™ Controls and scripts. The WebBrowser control directly handles the navigation, hyperlinking, history lists, favorites, and security. Applications can also use the WebBrowser control as an Active Document container to host other Active Documents. This means that richly formatted documents, such as a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet or Microsoft® Word document, can be opened and edited in-place from within the WebBrowser control. WebBrowser is also an ActiveX Control container that can host any ActiveX Control.

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