WebBrowser Control Overview

Article
04/23/2007

The WebBrowser control provides a managed wrapper for the WebBrowser ActiveX control. The managed wrapper lets you display Web pages in your Windows Forms client applications. You can use the WebBrowser control to duplicate Internet Explorer Web browsing functionality in your application or you can disable default Internet Explorer functionality and use the control as a simple HTML document viewer. You can also use the control to add DHTML-based user interface elements to your form and hide the fact that they are hosted in the WebBrowser control. This approach lets you seamlessly combine Web controls with Windows Forms controls in a single application.

Frequently Used Properties, Methods, and Events

The WebBrowser control has several properties, methods, and events that you can use to implement controls found in Internet Explorer. For example, you can use the Navigate method to implement an address bar, and the GoBack, GoForward, Stop, and Refresh methods to implement navigation buttons on a toolbar. You can handle the Navigated event to update the address bar with the value of the Url property and the title bar with the value of the DocumentTitle property.

If you want to generate your own page content within your application, you can set the DocumentText property. If you are familiar with the HTML document object model (DOM), you can also manipulate the contents of the current Web page through the Document property. With this property, you can store and modify documents in memory instead of navigating among files.

The Document property also lets you call methods implemented in Web page scripting code from your client application code. To access your client application code from your scripting code, set the ObjectForScripting property. The object that you specify can be accessed by your script code as the window.external object.

Name	Description
Document property	Gets an object that provides managed access to the HTML document object model (DOM) of the current Web page.
DocumentCompleted event	Occurs when a Web page finishes loading.
DocumentText property	Gets or sets the HTML content of the current Web page.
DocumentTitle property	Gets the title of the current Web page.
GoBack method	Navigates to the previous page in history.
GoForward method	Navigates to the next page in history.
Navigate method	Navigates to the specified URL.
Navigating event	Occurs before navigation begins, enabling the action to be canceled.
ObjectForScripting property	Gets or sets an object that Web page scripting code can use to communicate with your application.
Print method	Prints the current Web page.
Refresh method	Reloads the current Web page.
Stop method	Halts the current navigation and stops dynamic page elements such as sounds and animation.
Url property	Gets or sets the URL of the current Web page. Setting this property navigates the control to the new URL.

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WebBrowser Control Overview

Frequently Used Properties, Methods, and Events

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