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HTMLTextBox Control

Introduction

This Rich Text Editor-style control comes from a reference of the "Body Editor" in "New Message" dialog of Outlook Express. As we know, although a RichTextBox control is already provided within .NET Framework by Microsoft to display rich text for users, it still lacks in some real Rich Editing works which are extremely desirable. As a consequence, this control is right for the real editing work.

Inside HTMLTextBox

As a subclass of UserControl, HTMLTextBox mainly consists of two parts: one ToolBar and one WebBrowser control.

How to enable the WebBrowser to be editable?

The WebBrowser will enter "Edit Mode" after performing the following code.

webBrowserBody.Document.ExecCommand("EditMode", false, null);

How to overstrike your font

Perform the following code to enable the BOLD font on the selected characters.

webBrowserBody.Document.ExecCommand("Bold", false, null);

All the operations in this control are executed by invoking the function ExecCommand of WebBrowser.Document. For detailed info about ExecCommand, please refer to Microsoft MSDN.

PS: As announced by Microsoft in Command Identifiers, some of the Commands are mentioned to be no more applicable, however, they still work well. Please do not rely it 100 percent, just give a shot!

About Optional Fonts

foreach (FontFamily family in FontFamily.Families)
{
    toolStripComboBoxName.Items.Add(family.Name);
}

All the optional fonts in this control are retrieved by means of the code above.

About Font Size

In HTML page, seven types of font size are applicable (from 1 to 7). And the relationship between the HTML font size and the common font size is summarized in the following table:

HTML Font Size Common Font Size

1 8

2 10

3 12

4 14

5 18

6 24

7 36

To avoid confusion, the Common Font Size will display for users instead of the HTML Font Size.

How to use HTMLTextBox

As a UserControl, HTMLTextBox is very convenient for your use. And I do not override or expose too many properties or methods. By far, it just has two public properties": Text and Images. If you want more, you are free to add them by yourself for any purpose.

Text: to set or get more meaningful text, it is overridden.

get: return the entire HTML content including <html> and <body> etc.
set: set any text value and display them in this control, meanwhile, the "/r/n" will be automatically translated into <br>.

Images: to get the unique directories of all the attached images

NOTE: the COM object "Microsoft HTML Object Library" will be referenced by HTMLTextBox.

About Sample

Email Sender Example

Before running Sample, the following code needs to be changed accordingly.

In lines 23 - 26 in MailSender.cs

string host = "192.168.22.12";
int port = 25;
string userid = "jay.liu";
string password = "1111";

Loathsome BUG

The image inserted into the edit body cannot be resized, and no exception will be thrown. For now, I have no idea about the reason or solution.

History

First Version (1/22/2007).

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here

About the Author

Jay Liu

Location:

China

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Msgs 1 to 25 of 27 (Total in Forum: 27) (Refresh)

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How to do it like this

recole

1:50 7 Nov '08

Hi Jay, Thanks for the post of this code and its detail and its really helpful. But how to replace <FONT color=#FFFFFF>Font</FONT> to <FONT color="#FFFFFF">Font</FONT>? Can you help me? Thanks so much. Regards. Recole Lin
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Thank You

m-chaos

2:36 7 May '08

Code it Work
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McDull.Windows.Forms.dll

Paglia

9:38 27 Nov '07

Is it possible to eliminate the McDull.Windows.Forms.dll and use the Microsoft provided control? Or ... Is the source the McDull.Windows.Forms.dll available?
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Inserting text to the web browser control.

M. J. Jaya Chitra

1:06 19 Oct '07

I would like to add some text when some button is clicked into the webbrowser control.

I checked for the ExecCommand, but I am unable to find a solution.

Then I tried for the DocumentText.Insert(), but it is asking to pass the position, where can I get the cursor position in the web browser control.

Can any one help me in this concept.

Thank you all in advance.

Best Regards,
M. J. Jaya Chitra

Re: Inserting text to the web browser control.

bashaalex@mail.ru

5:51 5 Nov '07

I'm using this function to insert custom HTML statments in the current cursor position. public void InsertObject(string objectCode) { IHTMLDocument2 doc = (IHTMLDocument2)webBrowserBody.Document.DomDocument; IHTMLTxtRange txt = (IHTMLTxtRange) doc.selection.createRange(); txt.pasteHTML(objectCode); } Best regards, Alexander Basha
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Re: Inserting text to the web browser control.

M. J. Jaya Chitra

18:16 5 Nov '07

Thanks a lot Alex. It really helped me and reduced my job. One more thing, don't mistake me. I have tried cut, copy and paste using the command identifiers but it is not working. Can you tell me how to perform this. Once again thanks a lot for your help. Best Regards, M. J. Jaya Chitra
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Re: Inserting text to the web browser control.

M. J. Jaya Chitra

19:25 5 Nov '07

Thanks you Alex. I have coded to perform cut, copy paste in the html document. Best Regards, M. J. Jaya Chitra
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shortcutrs override

urza23

13:25 21 Sep '07

Hello,
I would like to change what happens when CTRL+S is pressed in webbrowser body. I need to have shortcuts ON, but ovveride just ctrl+s

Any ideas?

I tried to add this to webbrowsercontrol code, but it doesnt work:

protected override bool ProcessDialogKey(Keys keyData)
        {
            try
            {
                switch (keyData)
                {
                    case Keys.Control | Keys.S:
                        MessageBox.Show("changed");
                        break;
                }
                return base.ProcessDialogKey(keyData);
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                return false;
            }
        }

..or more precisely it works when I use it for some unhandled shortcut like ctrl+q .. but ctrl+s is catched by the webbrowser and does nothing

thanks for ideas

Re: shortcutrs override

skunker

7:00 26 Sep '07

Hi, If you find any solution to this, please let me know, I'm at the exactly same point. -- He tried hard, and done his best ...(my english teacher)
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Detect if edits have been made

Greg Ennis

18:32 31 Jul '07

I need to detect if edits have been made by the user (i.e., an "IsDirty" get/set property) so I can use my own prompt to save changes (the annoying prompt is useless to me). How can it be done? The control must be tracking it since it can show that annoying prompt, but how can I access it?
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Suppress/Disable Alert Message

Nutan T.

20:29 15 Jul '07

Hello, I am facing a problem with WebBrowser control in .NET 2.0 Windows C# appln.: How to avoid/disable alert message when changing DocumentText property of WebBrowser? Alert Mesage that i am getting goes something like this : "This Document has been modified. Do you want to save changes? " Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Nutan Nutan
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Re: Suppress/Disable Alert Message

Nutan T.

20:37 15 Jul '07

hey i got the solution by the earlier post, tricky one!!! //first webBrowserBody.Document.Write(string.Empty); //then webBrowserBody.DocumentText="whatever you like without anoying message box"; solved my problem. Thanks!
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Resizing Images

piotrekz5

3:32 25 Apr '07

How I can change behaviour of resizing images? Problem rises when I'm trying to resize image I've just added. I first I dblClick on image it works fine. If just select and try to resize it - it hangs until resizing take place. In other words clicking on resize pivot doesnt's work right.
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Saving as MHTML?

yann_lh

9:33 9 Apr '07

Hi there; great article! I was wondering how much you used and/or enhanced from this other article on the same subject: http://www.codeproject.com/cs/miscctrl/editor_in_windows_forms.asp[^]? Indeed, I was comparing the two, as would like to use one of them, and was unsure as to which one to start with ... any thought on this?

Also, I'd like to suggest the ability to save the document in a mhtml format, that would then include all embedded images as well, thus making it a lot easier to send by email and manipulate as a single file for other purposes. Since the WebBrowser document can display it, this should be feasible?

1.40/5 (5 votes)

Re: Saving as MHTML?

Riz Thon

1:09 8 Oct '07

Both articles are good. I still prefer this one as it doesn't use timer to update the menu bar. Also the update is more centralized and it's fairly simple to remove the link to the mshtml library if needed (only 2 places to comment).
Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink	1.00/5 (1 vote)

Change Background Color ?!

baer999

10:21 28 Mar '07

Hello, how can I change the Backgroundcolor of the Control?! thx
Sign In·View Thread·PermaLink	1.50/5 (2 votes)

Re: Change Background Color ?!

Riz Thon

1:06 8 Oct '07

If you're asking how to change the background color of the text, it's exactly as what's done with the font color. You just need to replace "ForeColor" with "BackColor".
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File Link

baer999

5:54 9 Mar '07

Hi, how can I follow a file or hyperlink in the editor? thx
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How do I turn off the Save Changes dialog box?

Michael Mahon

17:45 13 Feb '07

I have a button that pulls html from a screen scraper I wrote and I am upadting the text property of the HTMLTextBox but every time I append another "record" to the html it pops up and asks if I want to allow, save or cancel changes. This is one slick control. You did a great job. I just wanna flip that switch off so it will work for me. Thanks In Advance, Mike
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Re: How do I turn off the Save Changes dialog box?

Leon_

0:39 27 Feb '07

Has anyone found how to disable the save dialog? Best regards,
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Re: How do I turn off the Save Changes dialog box?

Leon_

21:52 27 Feb '07

Problem solved (in a way).

In order to avoid the save changes dialog you have also to avoid using the "HtmlTextBox.text" property.

You must change or reset the text accessing directly the webBrowser component in HtmlTextBox.cs.

You can do this easily by writing a public method like this (placed in HtmlTextBox.cs):

public void changeText(string htmlText)
{
webBrowserBody.Document.Body.InnerHtml = htmlText;
}

And calling it from your main form.

Best regards,

5.00/5 (1 vote)

Re: How do I turn off the Save Changes dialog box?

piotrekz5

3:27 25 Apr '07

//first webBrowserBody.Document.Write(string.Empty); //then webBrowserBody.DocumentText="whatever you like without anoying message box";
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Regarding "Loathsome BUG"

sonic_eel

23:13 31 Jan '07

if you double-click the inserted image, it can then be resized. I know that is not a fix, but I thought I'd post that in case you didn't realise. Best Regards, eel.
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Font F

Laurent Muller

21:08 29 Jan '07

Hello, Great control. Just a modification to display all fonts in the ComboBox: `toolStripComboBoxName.ComboBox.DisplayMember = "Name"; toolStripComboBoxName.ComboBox.DataSource = FontFamily.Families;` Best Reagards Laurent
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How to use in Web Application

Jitesh7746

8:08 25 Jan '07

I was looking for good text box control with toolbar like you have in your control for web application project. Your control will work for form based application and not for web application. Any suggestions?
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