How to embed Chrome browser in a WinForms application

Date Posted	Product	Author
January 31, 2018	Telerik UI for WinForms	Desislava Yordanova

Problem

This article demonstrates a sample approach how to embed Chrome in your application.

Solution

Integrate the CefSharp web browser component (based on Chromium) into your C# application. CefSharp is reliable, fast, fully open-source and does not need any extra dependencies to be installed by end users (except VC++ Runtime 2013).

1A. NuGet method – if you use NuGet, you can just grab CefSharp.WinForms from the NuGet repository.

Navigate to Solution > Configuration Manager and set your project to x86 or x64 since AnyCPU is not currently supported.

1B. Manual method – download the CefSharp binaries and unzip them.

CefSharp v51 x86 (for 32-bit apps)

CefSharp v51 x64 (for 64-bit apps)

• Right click your project, select "Add Reference", then "Browse":

• Select the following DLLs:

  CefSharp.dll

  CefSharp.Core.dll

  CefSharp.WinForms.dll

• Select all the files in the ZIP and copy those files into your Project's Debug folder (inside Bin):

2. Add the following code:

• Copy this to your import section:

using CefSharp;
using CefSharp.WinForms; 

• Copy this to your code section:

public ChromiumWebBrowser browser;

public void InitBrowser()
{
    Cef.Initialize(new CefSettings());
    browser = new ChromiumWebBrowser("www.google.com");
    this.Controls.Add(browser);
    browser.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
}

• Call InitBrowser() just after the call of InitializeComponent():

When you run the application, you have Chromium embedded in your Windows Forms project:

It is possible to call a JavaScript function once the DOM is loaded. The OnFrameLoadStart event is called before the DOM is loaded, so you'll need to use one of the follow: FrameLoadEnd/LoadingStateChanged

private void browser_LoadingStateChanged(object sender, LoadingStateChangedEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.IsLoading == false)
    {
        browser.ExecuteScriptAsync("alert('All Resources Have Loaded');");
    }
}

Depending on the version of the CefSharp you are currently using your application may require .NET Framework 4.0 and higher. Please refer to release branches section.

A complete solution in C# and VB.NET can be found here.