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Showing posts from January, 2023

Microsoft WebView2: How to check if the WebView2 runtime is installed in C# and VB

With the initial release of Windows 10, Microsoft released a completely new web browser - Microsoft Edge - that used its own rendering engine - EdgeHTML. In recent years, Microsoft deprecated the original version of Microsoft Edge and replaced it with a Chromium based version. The original version of Microsoft Edge came with a control called WebView which could be used by apps to display content. Now that Microsoft has released the new Chromium based Edge, a new control has been released called WebView2. The existing WebView control still uses the original Microsoft Edge whereas the new WebView2  uses the Chromium based Microsoft Edge. The new control however, is not reliant on the same version of Microsoft Edge that is used as the main browser - instead it is reliant on a separate component known as the WebView2 Runtime (except in the case of non-stable channels, which come with the WebView2 runtime). This component is preinstalled in Windows 11 and is currently being rolled out to W