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Sunday, November 27, 2016

Editing windows registry to Force WebBrowser control use the latest IE version installed in local machine

Here's the C# code I used for this task:

private void EditRegistryToFixIEWebBrowserCompatibility()
       {
           string installedIEVersion = string.Empty;
           int hostAppKeyValue = 0;
           //name of the application that hosts the WebBrowser object being invoked. If you are in debugging mode, the extension should be ".vshost.exe" instead of ".exe".
           var hostAppKeyName = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().Name + ".exe";

           //registry key for Feature Browser Emulation
           RegistryKey regKeyFBE = null, regKeyInstalledIEVersion = null, regKeyHostApp = null;

           try
           {
               //search for Feature Browser Emulation key in relevant windows architecture
               if (Environment.Is64BitOperatingSystem)
               {
                   regKeyFBE = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\MAIN\\FeatureControl\\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION"true);
                   regKeyInstalledIEVersion = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer"true);
               }
               else
               {
                   //For 32 bit machine
                   regKeyFBE = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Main\\FeatureControl\\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION"true);
                   regKeyInstalledIEVersion = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(@"SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\"true);
               }

               //get current IE installed version
               installedIEVersion = Convert.ToString(regKeyInstalledIEVersion.GetValue("svcVersion"))?.Split('.').FirstOrDefault();
               int.TryParse(installedIEVersion, out hostAppKeyValue);
               hostAppKeyValue *= 1000;
           }
           catch (Exception ex)
           {
               MessageBox.Show("Registry creation of Feature Browser Emulation key failed for Internet Explorer failed. {0}", ex.Message);
               return;
           }

           #region Search for registry key

           try
           {
               //search for a dword with a key named like our app's exe (if its value is lower than the current installed IE version, discard
               hostAppKeyValue = Math.Max(hostAppKeyValue, Convert.ToInt32(regKeyFBE.GetValue(hostAppKeyName)));
           }
           catch (Exception)
           {
               MessageBox.Show($"{hostAppKeyName} key does not exist. Creating...");
               regKeyHostApp = regKeyFBE.CreateSubKey(hostAppKeyName);
               int.TryParse(installedIEVersion, out hostAppKeyValue);
               hostAppKeyValue *= 1000;
           }

           #endregion

           // Need to set the minimum IE version currently supported by Google Maps's api - multiplied by 1000
           regKeyFBE.SetValue(hostAppKeyName, unchecked(hostAppKeyValue), RegistryValueKind.DWord);

           try
           {
               //Check for the key after adding
               hostAppKeyValue = Convert.ToInt32(regKeyFBE.GetValue(hostAppKeyName));
           }
           catch (Exception ex)
           {
               MessageBox.Show("Registry creation of Feature Browser Emulation key failed for Internet Explorer failed. {0}", ex.Message);
               return;
           }
       }

Thursday, November 24, 2016

C# WebBrowser facing errors when navigating into a page that makes use of (the new 3.25) google maps api

Problem:

I have a win forms application that makes use of a System.Forms.WebBrowser object, which in turn navigates to a given html that contains several javascript files that makes an api for drawing areas/polygons / adding text labels, among other things, on top of google maps. The problem is that google recently upgraded their api to v3.25, in which they do not support anymore IE versions lower than 10. My WebBrowser object was always emulating an IE 7 browser (not clear why, because after creating a blank winforms project and adding a single WebBrowser into it, to navigate into a page like the mentioned above - but this time hosted locally - the user agent string displayed (after adding alert(this.navigator.userAgent); into the onload event of the body html element) contained no "compatible; MSIE 7;" or alike, rather a rv.11 (referring to IE 11)).
Having the WebBrowser running an emulation of IE 7 was causing javascript errors (Google's api stopped supporting IE versions prior to 10).

Solution:

The solution that finally worked was this one.

Summary:

  1. Make sure you have IE 10 or higher installed on the machine serving the uri WebBrowser is to navigate to.
  2. Add the registry values as indicated in the link above - do not forget, when adding the DWORD, to use a key with the exact .exe file where the WebBrowser instance is invoked.
I added another post containing the C# code for fixing this issue (another post because I wanted a post that would catch a closer-to-the-exact-issue title).

Update: The approach above was found to be incomplete, due to part of Google API being deprecated some versions from now (which was still available to 3.4). Make sure you do not make use of MarkerImage, like below.

Click here for google's reference on it, but here's the summary:


Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Find in Visual Studio Find Results (further search)

I was wondering if it was possible to further search the results of a Find Results window in Visual Studio. I googled it but did not arrive to any relevant answer.

I then played a bit with it and ended up figuring out that it is possible - it is built in, and it's quite simple: just click CTRL + F inside the Find Results window.