Will the IE9 WebBrowser Control Support all of IE9's features, including SVG?
WebBrowser control will use whatever version of IE you have installed, but for compatibility reasons it will render pages in IE7 Standards mode by default.
If you want to take advantage of new IE9 features, you should add the meta tag <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9" > inside the <head> tag of your HTML page.
This meta tag must be added before any links to CSS, JavaScript files etc that are also in your <head> to work properly though (only other <meta> tags or the <title> tag can come before it).
An alternative is to add a registry entry to:
HKLM > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Internet Explorer > Main > FeatureControl > FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION
And in there add 'myApplicationName.exe' with value '9000' to force the WebBrowser control to display pages in IE9 mode. Though there are other values you can use too too, note that these docs aren't entirely accurate as it does not seem possible to get a page to render in IE 8 mode whatever value you use.
Adding the registry key to the same path in HKCU instead of HKLM will also work - this is useful as writing to HKLM requires admin privileges where as HKCU does not.
The IE9 "version" of the WebBrowser control, like the IE8 version, is actually several browsers in one. Unlike the IE8 version, you do have a little more control over the rendering mode inside the page by changing the doctype. Of course, to change the browser mode you have to set your registry like the earlier answer. Here is a reg file fragment for FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
"contoso.exe"=dword:00002328
Here is the complete set of codes:
- 9999 (0x270F) - Internet Explorer 9. Webpages are displayed in IE9 Standards mode, regardless of the !DOCTYPE directive.
- 9000 (0x2328) - Internet Explorer 9. Webpages containing standards-based !DOCTYPE directives are displayed in IE9 mode.
- 8888 (0x22B8) -Webpages are displayed in IE8 Standards mode, regardless of the !DOCTYPE directive.
- 8000 (0x1F40) - Webpages containing standards-based !DOCTYPE directives are displayed in IE8 mode.
- 7000 (0x1B58) - Webpages containing standards-based !DOCTYPE directives are displayed in IE7 Standards mode.
The full docs:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330730%28VS.85%29.aspx#browser_emulation
Thank goodness I found this. The following is extremely important:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9" >
Without this, none of the reports I'd been generating would work post IE9 install despite having worked great in IE8. They would show up properly in a web browser control, but there would be missing letters, jacked up white space, etc, when I called .Print(). They were just basic HTML that should be capable of being rendered even in Mosaic. heh Not sure why the IE7 compatibility mode was going haywire. Notably, you could .Print() the same page 5 times and have it be missing different letters each time. It would even carry over into PDF output, so it's definitely the browser.
A note about 64bit Windows which seems to trip up a few folks. If your app is running under 64bit Windows, you likely have to set the DWORD under [HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION] instead.
Just to be complete...
For 32 bit OS you must add a registry entry to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION
*******OR*******
For 64 bit OS you must add a registry entry to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION
This entry must be a DWORD, with the name being the name of your executable, that hosts the Webbrowser control; i.e.:
myappname.exe (DON'T USE "Contoso.exe" as in the MSDN web page...it's just a placeholder name)
Then give it a DWORD value, according to the table on:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330730(v=vs.85).aspx#browser_emulation
I changed to 11001 decimal or 0x2AF9 hex --- (IE 11 EMULATION) since that isn't the DEFAULT value (if you have IE 11 installed -- or whatever version).
That MSDN article contains notes on several other Registry changes that affects Internet Explorer web browser behavior.