Use a webpage as the UI in a C# desktop application?

Question

I\'m building a C# desktop app with a simple UI. Due to my familiarity with HTML/CSS, and a previous web-based iteration of a very similar app, it would be ideal if I could re-u

Answer 1

You can use WebBrowser control to add Web browser functionality to your application.

You can create your own html(s) and set your WebBrowser control to display those pages. You can navigate by clicking hyperlinks or by using keyboard shortcuts to move backward and forward through navigation history. By default, you can access additional browser functionality through the right-click shortcut menu

You can even manage those pages centrally (for e.g. on LAN) and all clients on LAN can connect to this central location. This way you can modify pages centrally.

Check a walkthrough on MSDN:

How to: Add Web Browser Capabilities to a Windows Forms Application

Answer 2

You can try to use a Chromium-based control - DotNetBrowser. This control provides wide interactivity options, like DOM manipulation and DOM events, which can be useful in your case.

In addition, there is an article that demonstrates how to use a web page as HTML UI in a C# desktop application: https://www.infoq.com/articles/html-desktop-net

Affiliation disclosure: I work with the team, which created DotNetBrowser.

Answer 3

You could try adding a Web Browser control to a forms application to show your page. But this will need to be remotely hosted as the code will not be able to execute locally, except if you listen for the specific links in c# and then perform the actions.

You could also try your hand at WPF which is a new technology to create good looking gui's with mark-up much like html, which you'll pick up pretty quickly with your html experience.

Answer 4

Other answers are dated, new good options:

• Electron + Electron-Edge - is the way to go for a new Electron app that communicates to a .NET backend (a DLL). Widely used and supported.
• Neutronium - best for already-written .NET WPF apps that need a HTML UI. Requires using Vue. Less popular and less supported.

Answer 5

Unfortunately neither WinForms or WPF is sufficiently like HTML/CSS to be of that kind of use. You'll be able to reuse the layout-concepts and art of course. And, with WPF being the closest thing to it, you might even keep a lot of the code-behind code.

But the short answer is: No

Answer 6

CefSharp (https://github.com/cefsharp/CefSharp) is a good way to embed chromium, but you still need a web server. Take a look at http://www.ultidev.com/products/Cassini/ to alternative for IIS.