Browser inside of a browser

Question

I am not trying to track clicks or anything like other people - I just want to put a browser within a browser that can go back, forward, refresh, accept user-entered URLs, and store bookmarks. Can flash/silverlight/ajax/whatever do this? If so, how?

Answer 1

flash can do basic html (AFAIK) not sure about silverlight. you will struggle to do it with javascript/iframes. Especially back/forward/refresh buttons. If you are on the same domain you have some control over the iframe, but once it leaves your domain, you lose control

Answer 2

have a look at this: http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/

Answer 3

Would using an iframe or an object with type="text/html" be useful to you in terms of being able to embed a page within a page? Either method effectively permits loading a separate page within a page with little side-effect.

Answer 4

How about:

Solution 1:

1. Create or use an existing ActiveX Web Browser control.
2. And let your web/page host that ActiveX, or host multiple controls.

Solution 2:

1. Put an iframe inside a UserControl, a textbox and a go button.
2. Get the user provided url from textbox.
3. Change the src of the iframe when user clicks the go button.

_

<iframe id="iFrame" name="myFrame" src="http://bing.com" 
                                     width="100%" height="300" frameborder="0">
<p>Does your browser support iframes?</p>
</iframe>

--EDIT--

This is in response to your comment; you posed 3 questions:

For 1, thats correct, ActiveX works for IE, more specifically for Windows; there are ways you can install ActiveX for different browsers, but it(the ActiveX) would require windows OS. See this.

For 2, try handling that using JavaScript; something like following within iframe block.

<p><a href="javascript:history.back()">Back</a></p>

Checkout these examples.

For the third one, if I understand you correctly then you can always parse the url when user clicks onto the Go button; and respond accordingly before rendering the page.