Plead for releasing WebkitBrowser source code

[tmighty2]

Hey folks,

as one of many developers I use Olaf Schmidt's WebKitBrowser in a serious application, and I use its possiblities to the maximum.
Doing what I do with the WebkitBrowser, switching to the Internet Explorer component as a replacement is simply not possible.

However, I'm under pressure by my customers who need https support.
I have tried just anything imaginable to make it work, but it's simply not possible with the current build.

Unfortunately - as Olaf wrote in another thread - the WebKit Browser is no longer being developed.

I would need to fix / update it myself in order to have https support.

However, without the source code, I can't.

I would therefore like to plead for releasing the source code so that people who are in bitter need of https support can try to add it themselves.

Otherwise, we'd be left in the worst situation possible:

100% depending on a no longer supported third party component.
For me and others, this might be a real life business problem, not just something that would be "nice to have" and something that one could also live without.

Thank you for considering my plead.

[DllHell]

Google "chromium embedded framework" or "CEF". There may be an activeX project.

Projects like CefSharp (https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp) are regularly updated and you might consider moving portions of your program to .net. You may even be able to host a .net control using com-interop.

[tmighty2]

I have tested all available alternatives intensively.
None worked without crashes with VB6.

Edit: I did try webkitx.com 1 or 2 years ago, and back then it crashed for me, but I see that it's being actively developed. I'm just giving it another try.
Thank you for pointing me at it again.

[Arnoutdv]

Webkit is already open source.
https://webkit.org

Olaf once created an ActiveX interface for it and stopped with that part.

So you are completely free to create an interface for it yourself.

[Schmidt]

However, I'm under pressure by my customers who need https support.

I've just tested that with the original WebkitCairo.7z package (as it sits on my site for the last years) -
and it seems to work (with https-requests against e.g. google.com or google.de, as well as vbRichClient.com) -
on both, Win8.1 and Win10 - so there seem to be no problems with these older curl + ssl libs (all from around 2011).

FWIW, I've updated the libcurl-related files (ssleay32, libeay32 - etc.) in the bundle to a newer libcurl-stack
(from 2017, which is somewhat larger of course) - and placed an appropriate link to that bundle on the RC5-download-page.

But that's something you could have done yourself of course (no compiling of the WebKit-C++ sources necessary).

That said, and despite the now updated libcurl- and ssl-stuff to a relatively recent version,
the larger parts of the package (WebKit.dll + JavaScriptCore.dll) are still quite old in the meantime -
and should therefore not be used for "public browsing" anymore (please use it only for
IntraNet- or InProcess-scenarios like HTML-Help-Viewers, etc., due to security reasons ...).

Releasing the sources would gain you nothing, because the current WebKit-Project (now, 8 years later)
is an entirely different animal and in very large areas structured completely different (source-wise).
So there would not be any "cherry-picking of recent patches" (applying them to old source-files) possible anymore.

If you want a recent (and thus more secure) WebKit-engine - re-compiling my sources from 2010 (about 1GB at that time)
would not make any sense - it'd be far easier, to simply download a Git-Snapshot from a recent stable build
(where the newer C/C++-File-dependencies and structures will "match and belong together").

Olaf

[tmighty2]

I should have been more specific.

You might want to try it with something like https://www.facebook.com/?sk=welcome or https://web.whatsapp.com/

I guess it requires the local storage of cookies which doesn't work with the richclient Browser.

[Schmidt]

That some sites show these "your are using a too old BrowserEngine"-pages,
does not have anything to do with https.

It's more a matter of a too old "User-Agent-String" (as well as js-code which is testing newer HTML5-features) -
but you can adapt at least the UserAgent-string to a somewhat newer variant of course -
e.g. the following code-snippet (setting the first best googled "Apple-related" string I've found) made the whatsapp.com page cooperative again.

  Dim WV As WebView
  Set WV = WebKit.WebView
      WV.setCustomUserAgent "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Galaxy Nexus Build/IMM76B) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.133 Mobile Safari/535.19"

As for cookie-behaviour - there should be no problem either - but certain effects like autodelete of cookies
(in case you're underway in Private-Browsing-Mode) might happen when you end a session - but these
Modes are switchable as well in your User-Code.

Olaf

[tmighty2]

The user agent made the cookie-disabled warning go away. That's a really good start, thank you.

What is the ideal place for setting the user agent?

[tmighty2]

Edit: I set the preferences within InitWebKitAndLoadURL:

(...)

Set Browser = New cwBrowser 'create a new (yet uninitialized) BrowserWidget
Set Browser.WebKit = m_WebkitInstance

Panel.Widgets.Add Browser, "Browser", 0, 25, Panel.Width, Panel.Height - 25

pSetBrowserOptions 'Here I set the preferences

[tmighty2]

Olaf, do you have any idea what I could do if cookies are gone after I close my VB6 project and then open it again and start up the browser?

[tmighty2]

I found the Webkit.WebCookieManager (hoping it would help me to permanently store cookies) but when I try to use its function "setCookieStorage", VB6 tells me that WebCookieManager isn't found although I see it in the object inspector:

Does anybody see my mistake here?

[tmighty2]

Olaf, can you tell me if that has never been implented? Or how would I access it, please?

[Schmidt]

Olaf, can you tell me if that has never been implented? Or how would I access it, please?

This functionality is apparently not implemented (at least not on the COM-interface of the WebKit.dll).
The "normal, COM-incompatible" C++ interface does support that of course - but in the COM-interface-wrapper-
classes of the original WebKit-sources there were a lot of COM-interface-methods (at that time), which were only "stubs" -
or were not implemented entirely, or were implemented wrongly - or in a "non-VB-compatible way"
(e.g. I remember having a hard time, changing the C++ sources, to get the Printing-related stuff to work properly at the VB-end).

That's probably because this interface was included only for embedding the WebKit-Engine as a "whole area covering"-
ActiveX-Plugin for the (at this time) IE8-MS-Browser-engine (to give it HTML5-features and a decent JS-engine).
So that mode was not often used in the end and thus the COM-stuff didn't see much love from the WebKit guys at that time,
and is (in the current sources) probably removed (not sure about that).

Olaf

[tmighty2]

Thanks!

[tmighty2]

Somebody suggested www.webkitx.com to me, and it solved the problems that I had with Olaf's browser.
Thank you so much. It's amazingly mature, perfectly stable and super user friendly.

Anyways, thank you to Olaf. Your browser helped me so much over several years!!

[vbrad]

I have looked at the webkitx site www.webkitx.com and it looks like a really professional product and offers a lot of functionality
that I don't really understand.
I use the webbrowser control in vb6 currently for some web-scraping mainly.
Because of the memory leak in that control I have started using the html object library to control internet explorer
in situations that webscrape repeatedly or fill-in online forms.
I suspect that I am lacking in imagination or knowledge or both but I would like to know what the possibilities greater than I already have that getting the webkitx active x control would provide.
If I am just webscraping what am I missing out on?
Thanks for any guidance for someone whose mindset is still largely confined to desktop programming and doesn't "get" the potential.

[DllHell]

If I am just webscraping what am I missing out on?

Probably not. People use these alternative browsers to get access to newer features that may not be available in the webbrowser (html5, css3, etc). And some people really just hate IE

[vbrad]

Probably not. People use these alternative browsers to get access to newer features that may not be available in the webbrowser (html5, css3, etc). And some people really just hate IE

Thanks for the information, I don't love internet explorer myself but as long as it gets the job done...

[softv]

I've just tested that with the original WebkitCairo.7z package (as it sits on my site for the last years) -
and it seems to work (with https-requests against e.g. google.com or google.de, as well as vbRichClient.com) ... .. .
... .. .
That said, and despite the now updated libcurl- and ssl-stuff to a relatively recent version,
the larger parts of the package (WebKit.dll + JavaScriptCore.dll) are still quite old in the meantime -
and should therefore not be used for "public browsing" anymore (please use it only for
IntraNet- or InProcess-scenarios like HTML-Help-Viewers, etc., due to security reasons ...).
... .. .
Olaf

Dear Olaf,

If my understanding is right,
1. what you mean to say by "public browsing" is that if my app (deployed in my end users' systems also) has a screen which allows public sites like "google dot com", "vbforums dot com", etc. to be shown within that screen itself, then that is NOT correct (due to security reasons). Right?

2. In fact, even if I have my own site "abc-mno-xyz dot com", even pages from that site should not be shown inside my app itself. Right?

3. If I display local pages (say local1.html) which reside in any of my app's installation directories (say "C:\MyApp\htmls\), then that's perfectly okay. Right?

4. Also, if local1.html has hyperlinks to pages from public sites (e.g. "vbforums dot com", "abc-mno-xyz dot com", etc.) which when clicked by the user will get displayed in a window of the user's default browser (say "Google Chrome"), then that is also perfectly all right. Right?

Kindly confirm me for all of the above, please. Because, I do not have any need to show any public sites inside my app. My case is similar to the scenario of "HTML-Help-Viewers" you have mentioned. So, for that purpose, I can definitely use your RC5 (with WebKitCairo or WebKitCairoNewLibCurl) without any issues at all in my app (deployed in my end-users' systems also). Right? Kindly please let me know.

Kind Regards.

[tmighty2]

I have abandoned Olaf's browser long ago.

I am now using Webkit from mobileFx.

It's wonderful and works with VB6 without any hassles. And great support.

[xiaoyao]

I have abandoned Olaf's browser long ago.

I am now using Webkit from mobileFx.

It's wonderful and works with VB6 without any hassles. And great support.

what about mobileFx download link?

https://github.com/weolar/miniblink49

This is open source and free (but he also has a paid version, so I am afraid that some people will say that I advertise). Anyway, I have used it for a few years and never have to pay for it.

[xiaoyao]

As long as it is free, nothing is charged. It is also good to use webview2, call the Google kernel of EDGE

[tmighty2]

I had tried any browser that I could find.
I'm using mobileFX WebKit since 3 years now, and have never experienced any crash.
Also, the dev is really helpful.

For VB.NET, I had / have EO.Browser, but I don't like it's payment model and that they don't help with any problems.

[xiaoyao]

GitHub - mobileFX/WebKitX: Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF1) ActiveX Wrapper
https://github.com/mobileFX/WebKitX

IT'S UPDATE BY 7 YEAS AGO?

[xiaoyao]

ABOUT:i seen miniblink but when i tested i found some bugs on version 2020,for example i opened some iranian sitew with persian fonts but cant show correct,i sent this bug in that github here:

https://github.com/imxcstar/vb6-miniblink-SDK/issues/1

This version is relatively old, and there is not much consideration for multi-language support. If you want to use it perfectly, it is estimated that you can only install the full version of Google Chrome or WEBVIEW2