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Resolved PowerBuilder 2019 R2 / New WebBrowser / HTML editor ?

  1. How-to
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  1. Thierry Garrigues
    Thierry Garrigues
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. Friday, 24 January 2020 08:33 AM UTC

Hi

With PowerBuilder 2019 R2, can we transform the new web browser control into an HTML editor (like Internet Explorer?)

Regards

Thierry

  1. Editor
  2. HTML/5
Updating greek letters into the database
Outlook OLE SentOnBehalfOfName Property
Accepted Answer
Michael Kramer
Michael Kramer Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Friday, 24 January 2020 14:01 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # Permalink

Currently not. Some APIs not there in this "release 1" of PowerBuilder's native WebBrowser control.

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Daniel Vivier
  1. Daniel Vivier
  2. Tuesday, 28 January 2020 23:42 PM UTC
I researched this recently - Chromium definitely has a DesignMode. You can even turn it on using the Console in Developer Tools (I tested it). However, I have no idea what its behaviour is like compared to the MS WebBrowser control's DesignMode, which we use for our HTML editor for mail-merge documents in our application, which works quite well.
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Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Wednesday, 29 January 2020 00:50 AM UTC
Hi Thierry, please send your suggestion to product@appeon.com.
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Miguel Leeuwe
  1. Miguel Leeuwe
  2. Wednesday, 29 January 2020 09:43 AM UTC
Hi Armeen,

I did a similar request already on 24th of Jan last year: https://www.appeon.com/standardsupport/track/view?id=2205

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Responses (4)
Chris Pollach @Appeon
Chris Pollach @Appeon Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Friday, 24 January 2020 19:41 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 1

Some HTML will currently not render either in my testing.

Especially more advanced HTML like HTML5 (depending on the feature used)

Comment
Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Friday, 24 January 2020 19:52 PM UTC
Hi Chris, Please open support ticket with test case so we can resolve for GA.
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Chris Pollach @Appeon
  1. Chris Pollach @Appeon
  2. Friday, 24 January 2020 20:11 PM UTC
Already did. ;-)
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Michael Kramer
Michael Kramer Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Friday, 24 January 2020 20:26 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 2

As follow up to this and several other browser related Q&A discussions in recent weeks. Today I rechecked Microsoft docs for WebView2 - the upcoming Chromium-based Edge browser component:

  1. As of 15-Jan-2020 (latest release notes) this component is still Developer Preview.

  2. This component is not plug-and-play replacement for the existing IE-Chakra based WebBrowser control.

    1. WebBrowser control is wrapped as ActiveX (or whatever the name is these days) and therefore accessible as OLECustomControl in PowerBuilder.

    2. The new component has no such OLE-accessible wrapper. You can add it to a C++ win32 app but you need to install a WebView2 SDK before you can develop software to interact with it.

TO-DO LIST BEFORE AVAILABLE

First, the WebView2 component needs to become generally available

Second, someone (Microsoft or someone else) needs to wrap it for OLE-access before we can use it in PowerBuilder user interfaces.

Comment
Roland Smith
  1. Roland Smith
  2. Friday, 24 January 2020 21:55 PM UTC
Sounds like a good candidate for a visual PBNI extension.
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Roland Smith
  1. Roland Smith
  2. Friday, 24 January 2020 21:56 PM UTC
Does Chromium even support a Design Mode?
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Michael Kramer
  1. Michael Kramer
  2. Friday, 24 January 2020 21:59 PM UTC
Good question. Honestly, I haven't looked.
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Daniel Vivier
Daniel Vivier Accepted Answer Pending Moderation
  1. Tuesday, 28 January 2020 23:45 PM UTC
  2. PowerBuilder
  3. # 3

I think the big issue for those of us distributing software via downloads is the installed size needed for a Chromium-based browser. The commercial ActiveX version that is available, WebKitX, says its redistributable is 75MB. (And our whole app's download is currently only about 30MB!) Whereas using the MS WebBrowser control needs no redistributable, because it is always included in Windows.

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Daniel Vivier
  1. Daniel Vivier
  2. Wednesday, 29 January 2020 01:05 AM UTC
Yes I think we probably do, Armeen, or at least on quite slow Internet. And we have a lot of customers who choose not to have Internet access at all on their church computers (presumably because they are worried about malware) so they have to download elsewhere, copy to a USB, and bring that to the church to install. We want installs for our customers (many of home are not at all expert with computers) to be fast, easy, and painless, and the bigger the install, the less that is true.

And more to the point, our solution with the MS WebBrowser control for mail-merge editing and merging is working well. There would have to be a huge "win" in switching to a Chromium-based browser control for us to be willing to more than triple the size of our installers for that one feature.
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Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  1. Armeen Mazda @Appeon
  2. Wednesday, 29 January 2020 04:04 AM UTC
I see. Well the old MS WebBrowser control is still in the product and we do not plan to remove it in the foreseeable future.
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Daniel Vivier
  1. Daniel Vivier
  2. Wednesday, 29 January 2020 12:17 PM UTC
Armeen, are we talking about the same thing? I'm taking about including the WebBrowser as an ActiveX control on a window, as in Roland Smith's good free example. That isn't part of the product, it's part of Windows.
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