Delphi,VCL... rendering web components on form

Question

Hi, how can I render a part of website to a bitmap using delphi?

recently I've seen Raudus framework which is ExtJs binding/wrapper for delphi. However what is unique about that, it does render components to look exactly like in the browser. Simply, it works like kind of WYSIWYG designer for Javascript components in delphi IDE. I was unable to try it since I'm using delphi personal (it requires dbrtl). However looking on the demo movie it takes some time to render the components (even after resizing them), thus I believe it is rendered through web browser rendering engine or something similar...

if anyone knows something similar but open sourced, please let me know... thanks in advance, m

Answer 1

If you're cool with how Internet Explorer renders the page, it will show properly in the TWebBrowser (built in component), and you can generate bitmaps from there.

http://delphi.about.com/od/vclusing/a/wb_scren_shot.htm

http://www.delphi3000.com/articles/article_4132.asp?SK=

Answer 2

Dave Baldwin's HTML display components are now freeware with source (even the Professional version) and work in Delphi up to 2006 (which means also 2007). I don't know if those will help, since you didn't specify which version of Delphi you're using.

Answer 3

A while ago I discovered an arcane ActiveX call: OleDraw. As it turns out, it works just great to use an embedded WebBrowser component (IWebBrowser2) to render HTML and grab the output into a bitmap.

The code may look a little like this:

uses ActiveX, OleCtrls, SHDocVw;
b:=TBitmap.Create;
try
  b.Width:=SizeX;
  b.Height:=SizeY;
  OleDraw(WebBrowser1.OleObject,DVASPECT_CONTENT,b.Canvas.Handle,Rect(0,0,SizeX,SizeY));
  b.SaveToFile(FileName);
finally
  b.Free;
end;