WebView2 Constructor

Definition

Namespace:

Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms

Assembly:

Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms.dll

Package:

Microsoft.Web.WebView2 v1.0.2903.40

Create a new WebView2 WinForms control. After construction the CoreWebView2 property is null. Call EnsureCoreWebView2Async(CoreWebView2Environment, CoreWebView2ControllerOptions) to initialize the underlying CoreWebView2.

public WebView2 ();

Public Sub New ()

Remarks

This control is effectively a wrapper around the WebView2 COM API, which you can find documentation for here: https://aka.ms/webview2 You can directly access the underlying ICoreWebView2 interface and all of its functionality by accessing the CoreWebView2 property. Some of the most common COM functionality is also accessible directly through wrapper methods/properties/events on the control.

Upon creation, the control's CoreWebView2 property will be null. This is because creating the CoreWebView2 is an expensive operation which involves things like launching Edge browser processes. There are two ways to cause the CoreWebView2 to be created: 1) Call the EnsureCoreWebView2Async(CoreWebView2Environment, CoreWebView2ControllerOptions) method. This is referred to as explicit initialization. 2) Set the Source property. This is referred to as implicit initialization. Either option will start initialization in the background and return back to the caller without waiting for it to finish. To specify options regarding the initialization process, either pass your own CoreWebView2Environment to EnsureCoreWebView2Async or set the control's CreationProperties property prior to initialization.

When initialization has finished (regardless of how it was triggered) then the following things will occur, in this order: 1) The control's CoreWebView2InitializationCompleted event will be invoked. If you need to perform one time setup operations on the CoreWebView2 prior to its use then you should do so in a handler for that event. 2) If a Uri has been set to the Source property then the control will start navigating to it in the background (i.e. these steps will continue without waiting for the navigation to finish). 3) The Task returned from EnsureCoreWebView2Async(CoreWebView2Environment, CoreWebView2ControllerOptions) will complete.

For more details about any of the methods/properties/events involved in the initialization process, see its specific documentation.

Accelerator key presses (e.g. Ctrl+P) that occur within the control will fire standard key press events such as OnKeyDown. You can suppress the control's default implementation of an accelerator key press (e.g. printing, in the case of Ctrl+P) by setting the Handled property of its EventArgs to true. Also note that the underlying browser process is blocked while these handlers execute, so:

If you need to do a lot of work and/or invoke WebView2 APIs in response to accelerator keys then consider kicking off a background task or queuing the work for later execution on the UI thread.