Webbrowser/es

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Starting a webbrowser to show a page/URL

Finding the default webbrowser

Every platform has a mechanism for its default platform. The LCL unit lazhelphtml contains a class THTMLBrowserHelpViewer to start a web browser for the LCL help system. You can use its method FindDefaultBrowser to find the default browser and the parameter to start. For example:

<Delphi> uses

 Classes, ..., LCLProc, LazHelpHTML;

...

implementation

procedure TMainForm.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); var

 v: THTMLBrowserHelpViewer;
 BrowserPath, BrowserParams: string;

begin

 v:=THTMLBrowserHelpViewer.Create(nil);
 v.FindDefaultBrowser(BrowserPath,BrowserParams);
 debugln(['Path=',BrowserPath,' Params=',BrowserParams]);
 v.Free;

end; </Delphi>

This gives for example under Ubuntu (Linux):

Browser=/usr/bin/xdg-open Params=%s

Under Windows you can get:

Browser=C:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe Params=url.dll,FileProtocolHandler %s

Starting the browser

Once you know the command line and parameters you can use TProcessUTF8 to start the browser:

<Delphi> uses

 Classes, ..., LCLProc, LazHelpHTML, UTF8Process;

...

implementation

procedure TMainForm.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); var

 v: THTMLBrowserHelpViewer;
 BrowserPath, BrowserParams: string;
 p: LongInt;
 URL: String;
 BrowserProcess: TProcessUTF8;

begin

 v:=THTMLBrowserHelpViewer.Create(nil);
 try
   v.FindDefaultBrowser(BrowserPath,BrowserParams);
   debugln(['Path=',BrowserPath,' Params=',BrowserParams]);
   URL:='http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org';
   p:=System.Pos('%s', BrowserParams);
   System.Delete(BrowserParams,p,2);
   System.Insert(URL,BrowserParams,p);
   // start browser
   BrowserProcess:=TProcessUTF8.Create(nil);
   try
     BrowserProcess.CommandLine:=BrowserPath+' '+BrowserParams;
     BrowserProcess.Execute;
   finally
     BrowserProcess.Free;
   end;
 finally
   v.Free;
 end;

end; </Delphi>

Using the turbopower internet pro control

Lazarus provides the package TurboPowerIPro (lazarus/components/turbopower_ipro/turbopoweripro.lpk) with the following features:

  • It contains a control to put onto a form. When you install the package in the IDE, you get some new components in the palette, so you can drop them onto a form just like any LCL control.
  • It is written completely in pascal and therefore works on all platforms out of the box without any extra installation.
  • You have the full control, what files/urls are opened.
  • It has not all the features of a full webbrowser. No multimedia stuff, javascript or flash. This must be implemented by you.

There are some examples in lazarus/components/turbopower_ipro/examples demonstrating how to open a local html file with some images, hyperlinks and history buttons.

QT Webkit

When using the Qt WidgetSet, you can use the Qt WebKit to embed a browser into a LCL form.

Lazarus LCL/Qt WebKit Demo available on FPC Qt4 Binding Web Page

THtmlPort

THtmlPort is a Lazarus/Free Pascal version of Dave Baldwin's HTML Components, including THtmlViewer, TFrameViewer and TFrameBrowser.

THtmlPort wiki page

GeckoPort

GeckoPort is a Lazarus/Free Pascal version of Takanori Ito's Gecko SDK for Delphi, including the TGeckoBrowser component.

GeckoPort wiki page