Showing m.bing.com in the WP8 WebBrowser control

Question

I\'m having a problem getting bing.com to load in a WebBrowser control on Windows Phone 8. It seems that doing that will launch the WP8 Search App (same as pressing the Search

Answer 1

I don't have access to my emulator, but I tried it on my phone, and:

1. The redirect doesn't happen when you "Prefer desktop version" and open m.bing.com. Warning: The mobile version isn't very pretty.

2. Try disabling scripts on your WebBrowser, that could stop the redirect from happening.

3. Any chance you could just use Google?

Answer 2

I don't know if there's a better way to handle this, but I found a solution. I haven't gotten it to work perfectly when the back button is clicked, so I will update my answer if/when I found a more solid solution. I still think this is a big flaw in the WebBrowser control in WP8.

Here is the code:

private bool _customHeaderRequest = false;

private void MainBrowser_Navigating(object sender, NavigatingEventArgs e)
{
    string host = e.Uri.Host.ToLowerInvariant().Trim();

    if ((host == "bing.com" || host.EndsWith(".bing.com")) && !_customHeaderRequest)
    {
        e.Cancel = true;

        Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
            MainBrowser.Navigate(e.Uri, null,
                "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; NOKIA; Lumia 710)\r\n"));

        _customHeaderRequest = true;
        return;
    }

    _customHeaderRequest = false;
}

private void MainBrowser_Navigated(object sender, NavigationEventArgs e)
{
    _customHeaderRequest = false;
}