[webkit-dev] Q: Webkit on Windows without COM registration (as wrapped DLL only?)

Thomas Brodt thomas.brodt at porabo.ch
Wed Jan 7 07:40:48 PST 2009


Hi list

as far as I have learned until now, there are several ways to use Webkit 
as an embeddable component in Windows applications. Maybe some wise on 
this list could help me out with some more answers that I couldn't find 
in days googling around.

One way to use Webkit on windows is the COM component which exposes some 
COM Interfaces that can be used to drive Webkit (I use Brent Fulgham's 
cairo based port without the Apple DLLs). This approach seems to work 
quite well as far as may experiments went. However, this COM solution 
requires that webkit.dll is registered with the Windows OS. This may be 
an issue in managed environments where restricted users cannot register 
the DLL after copying it in the application directory, so COM won't work 
for them. Or if several copies of Webkit in different version for 
different deployed applications are installed on a system, this may lead 
to problems, because only one path can be registered for the COM component.

The alternative - that I would also prefer over a COM wrapper - would be 
a DLL with a plain C callable interface. I just can use DLLs with their 
exported functions, not compile my program with dll usage. Does the gtk+ 
port support an API that can be used that way? I assume I would get some 
kind of handle for webview instances that must be given to each API call.

Thanks a lot for any explanations or comments

Thomas



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