Microsoft KB Archive/244310

= Obtaining the HWND for the WebBrowser control =

Article ID: 244310

Article Last Modified on 12/29/2004

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 128-Bit Edition
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 Service Pack 2
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 Service Pack 1
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 Service Pack 2
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0

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This article was previously published under Q244310



SYMPTOMS
Hosting the WebBrowser control in either a Visual Basic or Visual C++ application and calling its HWND property usually returns the following HRESULT of E_FAIL:

Method HWND of IWebBrowser2 failed.



CAUSE
The HWND property is not a valid property of the WebBrowser control.



RESOLUTION
WARNING: These techniques may not work for frame windows in future versions of Internet Explorer after 5.01. The advice that follows is only guaranteed to work for the top-level WebBrowser control.

Visual C++ developers can use the IOleWindow interface of the WebBrowser control and call its GetWindow method to retrieve the WebBrowser's HWND: IOleWindow *pOWin; HWND hBWnd;

HRESULT hRes = m_pBrowserApp->QueryInterface(IID_IOleWindow, (void **)&pOWin); if (SUCCEEDED(hRes)) { hRes = pOWin->GetWindow(&hBWnd); if (SUCCEEDED(hRes)) { // Place hBWnd-manipulating code here } }

Visual Basic developers can use the following code, which takes the HWND of the hosting form and examines all its children until it finds the window with a window class of "Shell Embedding". This is the topmost window of the WebBrowser control.

CAUTION: The Internet Explorer window class name may change in future browser versions. Use this workaround with care. Option Explicit

Public Const GW_HWNDNEXT = 2 Public Const GW_CHILD = 5 Public Declare Function GetWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal wCmd As Long) As Long Public Declare Function GetClassName Lib "user32" Alias "GetClassNameA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal nMaxCount As Long) As Long

Public Function GetBrowserWindow(hwndBrowserContainer As Long) As Long Dim RetVal As Long Dim Result As Long Dim hwndPeer As Long Dim ClassString As String * 256 hwndPeer = GetWindow(hwndBrowserContainer, GW_CHILD) While (Result = 0) And (hwndPeer <> 0) hwndPeer = GetWindow(hwndPeer, GW_HWNDNEXT) RetVal = GetClassName(hwndPeer, ClassString, 256) If hwndPeer <> 0 Then RetVal = GetClassName(hwndPeer, ClassString, 256) If Left$(ClassString, InStr(ClassString, Chr$(0)) - 1) = "Shell Embedding" Then Result = 1 End If       End If    Wend GetBrowserWindow = hwndPeer End Function Please note that neither of these techniques are needed when you automate Internet Explorer. For automation, C++ and Visual Basic users can both use the HWND property of the InternetExplorer object.



STATUS
This behavior is by design.

Keywords: kbwebbrowser kbprb KB244310

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