Microsoft’s WebView 2 technology is entering general availability for developers building Win32 C and C++ apps.
The company detailed WebView 2 in a blog post, which you can check out here. In short, WebView 2 is based on Microsoft’s new Chromium-based Edge browser — the original WebView used Microsoft’s proprietary Edge browser engine. Ultimately, that change means components that use WebView 2 will benefit from Chromium Edge’s more modern technology, and hopefully will yield better performance and improved compatibility.
Developers can use WebView 2 within Win32 apps built with C and C++ to render and display web content, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. However, those who may want to use WebView 2 with things like .NET and WinUI 3 will have to wait a bit longer. WebView 2 will come to Microsoft’s .NET framework later this year. As for WinUI 3, it will gain WebView 2 once WinUI 3 comes out of preview in 2021.
For developers who build web content into native apps for Windows, WebView 2 and its improvements should prove helpful.
You can learn more about WebView 2 here.
