TEdgeBrowser - Any successful deployments and updates?

[David P 2]

Hello

 

Not sure if this should be here or third-party.

 

Has anyone released an application to customers which includes TEdgeBrowser?  Which method did you use to install the correct Webview2loader.dll... and keep it updated?

 

I'm wondering if we're walking into a big support issue here.

 

Many thanks.

[Der schöne Günther 306]

We started doing that even before it was considered "stable" and never had a problem. To be honest, I'm only using it for displaying PDFs and some small live value display, nothing too fancy.

 

I think we just make sure that the WebView2Runtime is installed, and that's it.

[David P 2]

Thanks. Do you ship a WebView2Loader.dll or use a MS installer for that.  I shipped the one provided in the \redist folder and have had mixed results on client test sites.

[rgdawson 7]

I deploy WebView2 in an MS Store App.  Prior, I bundled Chromium Embedded Framework.  Webview2 is a wonderful thing.  I originally used the built-in TEdgeBrowser, but I switched to Webview4Delphi as it is far more complete.  I highly recommend WebView4Delphi (Free and Open Source, and lots of examples).  Installation is rarely required these days, but my app will detect if not installed and install it on the fly using the small downloadable bootstrap installer which I embed in my app along with the WebView2Loader.dll.  Automatic installation was tricky at first since, at the time, admin privileges were needed and a Store App does not have that and users may not be able to elevate.  But then Microsoft made it so that the installer will allow Per-User install and then magically convert it to a Per-System install on the next system update.  But, as I say, it is hard to find a system that does not already have Webview/Edge installed these days.  TEdgeBrowser will suffice unless you are doing advanced stuff.  I am doing some advanced stuff like injecting javascript, sending data from the web page to my app, intercepting keystrokes, security stuff, reading headers and such and TEdgeBrowser was missing those interfaces and I had to write them myself which was a pain.  WebView4Delphi is far more complete.  In switching from CEF to WebView my app package shrunk from about 200MB to about 15MB.  And I can rely on the OS to keep everything up to date for me.  With about 40,000 installs of my app, I have had zero problems.