Thread: newbie help webbrowser / .Net Framework 2.0 issue

Hi there,

I've asked this same question on a few other boards, and left it for days now, with no replies. I'd really really appreciate it if someone replied, even if just to say "that might be impossible".

I'm trying to create a really simple webbrowser with Visual C++, is there any way I can do this without requiring the end user to have .NET Framework 2.0 installed? Can it work just with Framework 1.0 / 1.1? Or should I be trying to do this in a different language?

Any help would be gratefully recieved. Let me know if anything needs clarified.

Thanks

Duncan

> I'm trying to create a really simple webbrowser with Visual C++
How "really simple" ?

Simple as in say "curl", which just downloads web pages and stores the results in a file?

Not so simple as say "lynx", which is a text-only browser?

Or complex like "firefox", which has all the graphics, scripting and plugin capabilities.

You can get the source code for all of these, perhaps you should pick one and study for a while.

Part of the problem is we have no clue as to how competent a programmer you are. If your last program was "hello world", then I'd probably say that "a browser" as your next project is over ambitious.


Or is there some "browser" component in .NET which you can just glue together with a few lines of code and then call yourself an uber-web-browser writing wizard even though 99.99% of the work has already been done by somebody else?

Hi Salem,

Thanks for the reply.

I'm competent in a few languages, but everything I've done lately has been server side, php, asp, mysql etc.
So with Visual C++ I'm pretty much out of my depth.

I'm trying to write an exe which will just create a window showing a webpage I've made, no URL bar, no status bar, just so it appears to be a standalone ap.

I understand that 'simple' can be misconstrued there, it's just that on other forums where I've asked the same question, I've gone into more detail, but since I've been getting no replies (you're the first, thanks!) I thought it best to keep my word count down.
It'd come under "complex like "firefox", which has all the graphics & scripting"

I've managed to create an exe to do just that. But it uses .NET Framework 2.0

Yep, there's a browser component in .NET that I used, but really, does anything about me come across as trying to appear as an "uber-web-browser writing wizard"?
Apologies if so, but I was hoping that "newbie" bit in the title would cover me on that.

And honestly, while I'm happy to learn, I am new to this language, so I'd quite happily use something where 99.999% of the work has been done by someone else.

I'm going to try reverting back to "VC++ .Net 2003". If it works out, I'll post something here (and everywhere else I've asked) so that hopefully google will pick it up, and people like me won't have so much trouble

I think the browser component was new with VS 2005. In which case, if you want to go that route then you would have to use the 2.0 framework. Like Salem said, the browser component has all the hard stuff done for you so if you wanted to write a browser yourself using something else then you would need to prepare yourself to do a lot more than just click and drag a pretty icon onto a blank form I would imagine

I'm trying to write an exe which will just create a window showing a webpage I've made, no URL bar, no status bar, just so it appears to be a standalone ap.

The simplest way to do this is using the ShowHTMLDialog function. If you need greater functionality, you'll need to use the browser control.

The WebBrowser Control is an activeX control. As such you can use it in an MFC or ATL project fairly easily( or even Visul Basic, VBA, or any app that can use activex controls. I once created a web brower using excel, the address bar was just a cell in excel.