Options for embedding Chromium instead of IE WebBrowser control with WPF/C#

C#Wpf Google Chrome Webbrowser Control Chromium Embedded

C# Problem Overview

Updated for 2020, I've linked my article where I compare the memory footprints of different approaches to hosting HTML WebView in a basic Windows Desktop application:

Internet Explorer-based WPF WebBrowser control suffers from some keyboard and focus issues and memory leak issues. As an alternative solution to these problems, we're considering available options for hosting Chromium instead of WebBrowser control in our WPF/C# project based around HTML editing. Similar questions have been asked here previously. I've read the answers and done my own research, but I hope to obtain some more feedback from people who have actually used any of the following options in production-quality projects:

Awesomium and Awesomium.NET

It looks very appropriate, but I don't like the fact the project is not open-source and the full source is not easily available. Also, it might be an overkill for our project, as off-screen rendering is not something we really depend on.

Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) and .NET bindings for CEF

This is probably the best option currently available. The project seems to be alive and active, being currently in sync with Chrome v27. CEF3 uses Chrome multi-process architecture. It also looks like Adobe is giving it some endorsement.

Google's Chrome Frame

While the original purpose of it was to be an HTML5 plugin for IE and Firefox, it actually works as standalone ActiveX control too, so I could wrap it for use with WPF. It exposes a sufficient API for interaction with the inner web page (onmessage, addEventListener/removeEventListener, postMessage). I'm aware Google is to discontinue Chrome Frame, but I assume the sources will remain in Chromium repository. It should not be difficult to update it with the latest Chromium code as we go, and we would have full control over this.

WebKit .NET wrapper

Not exactly Chromium-based and doesn't use V8 engine, so it is not really an option.

Is there any other option I might have overlooked?

I would greatly appreciate if someone shared her/his experience with any of the above options for a real-life, production-quality WPF project. Did you have any integration, licensing, or deployment implications?

C# Solutions

Solution 1 - C#

You've already listed the most notable solutions for embedding Chromium (CEF, Chrome Frame, Awesomium). There aren't any more projects that matter.

There is still the Berkelium project (see Berkelium Sharp and Berkelium Managed), but it emebeds an old version of Chromium.

CEF is your best bet - it's fully open source and frequently updated. It's the only option that allows you to embed the latest version of Chromium. Now that Per Lundberg is actively working on porting CEF 3 to CefSharp, this is the best option for the future. There is also Xilium.CefGlue, but this one provides a low level API for CEF, it binds to the C API of CEF. CefSharp on the other hand binds to the C++ API of CEF.

Adobe is not the only major player using CEF, see other notable applications using CEF on the CEF wikipedia page.

Updating Chrome Frame is pointless since the project has been retired.

Solution 2 - C#

We had exactly the same challenge some time ago. We wanted to go with CEF3 open source library which is WPF-based and supports .NET 3.5.

Firstly, the author of CEF himself listed binding for different languages here.

Secondly, we went ahead with open source .NET CEF3 binding which is called Xilium.CefGlue and had a good success with it. In cases where something is not working as you'd expect, author usually very responsive to the issues opened in build-in bitbucket tracker

So far it has served us well. Author updates his library to support latest CEF3 releases and bug fixes on regular bases.

Solution 3 - C#

Here is another one:

http://www.essentialobjects.com/Products/WebBrowser/Default.aspx

This one is also based on the latest Chrome engine but it's much easier to use than CEF. It's a single .NET dll that you can simply reference and use.

Solution 4 - C#

I have used Awesomium.NET. Although I don't like the fact that it's not open-source, and also the fact that it uses a pretty old Webkit rendering engine, it is really easy to use. That's about the only endorsement I can give it.

Solution 5 - C#

UPDATE 2018 MAY:

Alternatively, you can embed Edge browser, but only targetting windows 10.

Here is the solution.

Solution 6 - C#

I had same issue with my WPF RSS reader, I originally went with Awesomium (I think version 1.6) Awesomium is great. You get a lot of control for caching (images and HTML content), JavaScript execution, intercepting downloads and so forth. It's also super fast. The process isolation means when browser crashes it does not crash the app.

But it's also heavy, even release build adds about 10-15mb (can't remember exact number) and hence a slight start-up penalty. I then realized, only problem I had with IE browser control was that it would throw the JavaScript errors every now and again. But that was fixed with the following snippet.

I hardly used my app on XP or Vista but on Win 7 and above it never crashed (at least not because I used IE browser control)

IOleServiceProvider sp = browser.Document as IOleServiceProvider;
if (sp != null)
{
	IID_IWebBrowserApp = new Guid("0002DF05-0000-0000-C000-000000000046");
    Guid IID_IWebBrowser2 = new Guid("D30C1661-CDAF-11d0-8A3E-00C04FC9E26E");

	webBrowser;
    sp.QueryService(ref IID_IWebBrowserApp, ref IID_IWebBrowser2, out webBrowser);
    if (webBrowser != null)
    {
   	    webBrowser.GetType().InvokeMember("Silent", 
                BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.PutDispProperty, null, webBrowser, new object[] { silent });
	}
}

Solution 7 - C#

Microsoft is releasing the "Microsoft Edge WebView2" WPF control that will get us a great, free option for embedding Chromium across Windows 10, Windows 8.1, or Windows 7. It is available via Nuget as the package Microsoft.Web.WebView2.

Solution 8 - C#

If you are considering commercial solutions, you can also take a look at DotNetBrowser.

It has plenty of features that you can use for deep integration (e.g. DOM support, JavaScript execution, calling .NET objects from JavaScript, network and cookies handling, printing web pages from code). It is based on the recent Chromium engine and supports a wide range of .NET implementations, from .NET Framework 4.5 to .NET 6. Both WPF and Windows Forms are supported.

Here is a repository containing examples that demonstrate how it can be used in various scenarios: https://github.com/TeamDev-IP/DotNetBrowser-Examples

It is also available on NuGet: https://www.nuget.org/packages/DotNetBrowser/

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	noseratio	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - C#	Czarek Tomczak	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - C#	Artem	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - C#	Jason	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - C#	Ming Slogar	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - C#	Rahul	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - C#	Sameer Vartak	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - C#	scottheckel	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - C#	Anna Dolbina	View Answer on Stackoverflow