Advocating for WebView2 on Windows

HTMLViewer options on Windows aren’t exactly great right now. X-UA-Compatible on Windows 10 uses Edge and works well. WebKit renderer adds significantly to install size and adds cef subprocesses that sometimes don’t shutdown, creating customer support issues. Windows 7 is left out in the cold.

WebView2, from what I can tell from the docs, would solve this problem. We could have a consistent Edge experience Windows, making the renderer property almost obsolete.

<https://xojo.com/issue/59961>

In the meantime, I guess I’ll use ShowURL on Windows 7 (maybe 8 too) because the native render can’t even open the url I need.

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I’m not sure what you mean by this, our WebKit based HTMLViewer is supported on Windows 7. Whatever issues it may have should be reported, but I suspect most of what you are seeing has already been addressed (only because it sounds old and familiar). WebView2 introduces their own runtime so unless users have Edge installed you’d have to provide a way to download it with your installer (all trade-offs of course, and this does not imply we’ll never add support for WebView2, just pointing out the obvious headaches of doing so).

I meant without resorting to the WebKit renderer. I’ve had problems with cef processes building up and/or getting stuck, so when users try to install an update, the updater complains that the app is still running. I do recall seeing something about improving that behavior, but I swore off using it. Purged all HTMLViewers from my app because of it. Now I’m exploring potentially bringing HTMLViewer back, but I’m hesitant to risk Chromium again.

I thought this was fixed with <https://xojo.com/issue/55867>

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Wouldn’t the fixed version distribution mode be similar to the way you’re doing things now?

True, that is similar, but the size of that download is much bigger than CEF3…

It would be nice to know whether Xojo Inc. plans to do this.
Otherwise there may be the opportunity for a plugin vendor.

:joy: :+1:

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I am playing a bit:

Seems to work in a test app.

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First version coming soon from MBS. Thanks Christian.

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We got a blog post about it:

Please try with final 20.5 version of MBS Xojo Plugins and WebView2ControlMBS control.

Actually the full installer is just 117Mb not a lot of difference with CEF, BUT you could include only the Bootstrapper installer that is 2mb, since WebView2 Runtime will be installed on almost ALL windows machines that receive automatic updates a download and install will be needed only on a few instances.