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Ready for the new Microsoft Edge Chromium browser!
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Unless you have been living under a rock, you will know that Microsoft has been busy transforming their Edge browser to be based on Google Chromium. This means Edge ditches the EdgeHTML rendering engine as well as its JavaScript engine ChakraCore. Now Edge will use the Blink rendering engine and the V8 JavaScript engine. Some consider this excellent news, especially for browser compatibility for your websites (one less rendering engine to check against), others are sceptical that this reduces competition in the browser world. As always, it is hard to please everyone.
Now, for Delphi developers this is fantastic news! With adopting Chromium, Microsoft also did the necessary effort to provide the ability to host the browser in your native Win32 or Win64 applications! And yes, I hear your relief. Finally, after all those years, developers can finally get rid of the dependency on the Internet Explorer activeX with all its rendering and security issues and less and less website compatibility every day.
As Microsoft will roll-out Edge Chromium to Windows 10 machines (their only actively supported Windows operating system these days). This means that the solution eventually will require no extra deployments with your Delphi executables (as opposed to using the standalone CEF4 Chromium engine that requires a myriad of DLLs and other files to deploy).
Being very excited about this, we decided to already prepare for this and develop a browser component for Delphi (and in the process also for Lazarus) that is based on the new Microsoft Edge Chromium. While working on this, we thought we could as well create it for VCL Delphi applications as for FMX (FireMonkey) Windows applications (and LCL Lazarus applications).
Oh wait, I said one component that can be used in 3 different frameworks? Yes, for 4 years already we have our FNC technology (Framework Neutral Components) that allows us to do this.
So, in a nutshell, in an upcoming TMS FNC Core update, expect the new web browser to be included that uses Edge Chromium out of the box. As an extra cherry on the cake, this browser will offer live preview of pages at design-time.
Here is Delphi 10.3 Rio showing a VCL application with a live Edge Chromium based browser component:
Here is Lazarus 2.0.6 showing an LCL application with a live Edge Chromium based browser component:
Microsoft is doing a staged rollout of their new Edge Chromium since Jan 15, 2020, but if your Windows 10 was not yet updated with it, you can download it here.
Get started with our FNC components for VCL applications, FMX applications, LCL applications and TMS WEB Core clients today. Shortly, we will release the TMS FNC Core update with the new Edge Chromium support. Stay tuned also for more extremely exciting new developments brewing in our labs and coming to FNC soon!
Bruno Fierens
This blog post has received 12 comments.
2. Friday, February 7, 2020 at 10:17:47 AM
Microsoft also released Edge Chromium for Windows 7, Windows 8 https://venturebeat.com/2020/01/15/microsoft-launches-chromium-edge-for-windows-7-windows-8-windows-10-and-macos/
We haven''t tested it with this though (same for macOS). It is highly likely that it will also work but it remains to be tested.
Bruno Fierens
3. Friday, February 7, 2020 at 3:31:08 PM
So this means I will be able to use a Delphi wrapper for WebView2 for displaying local PDF files? Really looking forward to this.
Fronzel Neekburm
4. Tuesday, February 11, 2020 at 1:44:54 PM
There is a lot to discover and implement. We still need to investigate if files can be loaded in the Embedded Chromium control.
Pieter Scheldeman
5. Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 8:36:25 PM
We are planning a new project initialy based on CEF4. Do you have release date for FNC Core update with the new Edge Chromium support ?
Paquet Erik
6. Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 9:03:57 PM
We aim for Q1. Via beta access something faster could maybe be provided.
Bruno Fierens
7. Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 9:21:48 AM
It would be nice if you could also provide this as part of the VCL UI Pack, since we are not using the FNC framework. Thanks!
Raß Jacqueline
8. Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at 5:00:44 PM
TMS FNC controls can be used together with VCL UI Pack controls in VCL applications.
Bruno Fierens
9. Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 7:16:39 PM
Fronzel: WebView2?Bruno: ETA on the release?
Looks just in time for my wikiWrapper for an internal system.
JAC.
Jason Chapman
10. Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at 8:34:58 PM
We aim for Q1
Bruno Fierens
11. Friday, February 21, 2020 at 3:19:10 PM
Please add to VCL UI pack - the rest of FNC pack already exists in VCL, for those who have already VCL subscription it is unnecessary cost.
Rakyta Ivan
12. Monday, March 23, 2020 at 11:20:06 AM
Applause!
Aschbacher Peter
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Sincerely,
A Still-Win7-user
Hansen Keld