Internet Explorer 9 RC stops my WinForms WebBrowser control to work in editing mode

Question

Using the IHtmlDocument2.designMode property set to On to switch a WebBrowser control hosted on a Windows Forms form to editing mode suddenly stopped working after installing Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 RC.

Question:

Any chance to fix this?

I already tried to tweak with doctype or with the EmulateIE7 meta tag but without success.

(An example would be this project)

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Update 2011-02-21:

As Eric Lawrence suggested, I adjusted the "Zeta" example to set the document text before setting the edit mode.

Unfortunately I did not manage to switch to design mode, either.

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Update 2011-02-24:

Parts of the discussion also take place in Eric's blog.

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Update 2011-02-26:

What I currently eperience is that the behaviour seems to be different for HTTP URLs and for content that was added via WebBrowser.DocumentText.

First tests seems to prove this assumption.

I'm now going to build a solution around this assumption and post updates and a proof-of-concept here.

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Update 2011-02-26 (2):

I've now built a proof-of-concept with a built-in web server which I believe is also working well with IE 9. If anyone would like to download and test whether it is working and give me a short feedback, I can clean up and release the source code for this.

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Update 2011-02-26 (3):

No feedback yet, I still updated the HTML Edit Control article and demo over at the Code Project.

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Update 2011-03-16:

Since Internet Explorer 9 was released yesterday, we updated our major products to use the idea with the integrated web server as described in the HTML Edit Control article.

After nearly a month of testing, I think it works quite well.

If you do experience any issues in the future with this approach, please post your comments here and I can investigate and fix.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem and got around it by adding the following line to the DocumentCompleted event:

 ((HTMLBody)_doc.body).contentEditable = "true";

Answer 2

We just need an empty editable control. I did however step through debugger and add value to the control's InnerHtml and it displayed it fine, and I could edit it.

Small update, we were able to get the control editable using this line also:

browserControl.browser.Document.Body.SetAttribute("contentEditable", "true");

This allows us to avoid referencing mshtml, (don't have to include Microsoft.mshtml.dll)

This lets us avoid increasing our installation size by 8 megs.

Answer 3

What's your exact code?

If I set the following code:

    private void cbDesign_CheckedChanged(object sender, EventArgs e){
        var instance =
    Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.NewLateBinding.LateGet(
    wbView.ActiveXInstance,
    null,
    @"Document",
    new object[0],
    null,
    null, null );

         var objArray1 = new object[] { cbDesign.Checked ? @"On" : @"Off" };

    Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.NewLateBinding.LateSetComplex(
    instance,
    null,
    @"designMode",
    objArray1,
    null,
    null,
    false,
    true );

The IE9 Web Browser instance enters designMode without any problems. If you change the "Zeta" example to not set the document text after entering design mode, it also works fine.

Answer 4

Just want to add that I am also unable to enter designmode (using a WebBrowser control in my case). This was not an issue in the beta. Definitely new with the RC.

Answer 5

Another Code Project user suggested to use the following code:

First, add event DocumentCompleted:

private void SetupEvents()
{
    webBrowser1.Navigated += webBrowser1_Navigated;
    webBrowser1.GotFocus += webBrowser1_GotFocus;
    webBrowser1.DocumentCompleted += this.theBrowser_DocumentCompleted;
}

Then write the function:

private void theBrowser_DocumentCompleted(
    object sender, 
    WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e)
{
    webBrowser1.Document.Write(webBrowser1.DocumentText);
    doc.designMode = "On";
}

Although I did not test this, I want to document it here for completeness.

Answer 6

It's fixed if the property is set after the document is loaded

private void DocumentCompleted(object sender, WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e)
{

    IHTMLDocument2 Doc = Document.DomDocument as IHTMLDocument2;
    Doc.designMode = @"On";
}

Answer 7

Yesterday, Internet Explorer 9 RTM finally was released.

I did some more tiny adjustments to my control, but basically the idea with the intergrated, small web server seems to work rather well.

So the solution is in this Code Project article:

Zeta HTML Edit Control
A small wrapper class around the Windows Forms 2.0 WebBrowser control

This was the only solution that worked for me.

I hope it is OK to answer my own question and mark my answer as "answered", too?!?

Answer 8

I was also able to get this to work using the following inside the DocumentCompleted event:

IHTMLDocument2 Doc = browserControl.browser.Document.DomDocument as IHTMLDocument2;
if (Doc != null) Doc.designMode = @"On";

Thanks everyone!

Answer 9

I use HTML Editor Control, I solved this problem adding the DocumentComplete event

private void webBrowser1_DocumentCompleted(object sender, WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e)
{
    (((sender as WebBrowser).Document.DomDocument as IHTMLDocument2).body as HTMLBody).contentEditable = "true"; 
}