First brought to my attention by a comment from Darvin Martin, there appears to be another major limitation with the Modern Web Browser control.
It would seem that you cannot mix content sources. Let me explain …
The Issue
If you navigate to a WWW URL (a website), you cannot then navigate to a local file on your hard drive.
Inversely, if you start by displaying a local file, you cannot then navigate to a WWW URL (website). Even if you’ve defined the WWW URL as a Trusted Domain!!!
Imagine the case where in a company you create a landing page with links for different sites, well the page will not work. It will display fine, but none of the links will work! I mention this concept because it is one I have implemented in numerous companies over the years to help engineers, office staff, … So this type of limitation is actually VERY problematic.
What also bothers me with this issue is that there is no error to let the developer and/or users know the root cause of why things aren’t working as intended.
Edge allows one to switch content without issue, so why not the Modern Web Browser control? Why does the Access Dev Team keep tying our hands behind our backs. It continues to amaze me how Microsoft has crippled their Modern Web Browser control making it a shell of what it could have been and truly reducing its overall usefulness for real world applications.
Workaround
The workaround I have come up with is to superimpose 2 Modern Web Browser controls (1 for displaying local content, 1 for displaying WWW URLs) and trap the click on a link, determine the href and then use the appropriate control. It’s a bit of a pain, but works well.
Another option, depending on the sites being linked to, would be to use the original Web Browser control that doesn’t have such limitations.
Getting This Issue Fixed!
📢 I’ve created a Feedback Portal suggestion on the matter and would ask anyone reading this post to please take the time to upvote the idea so hopefully, one day, Microsoft might fix this issue and give us a Web Browser control that works properly!
We use the browser control primarily for local document management in our Family Office Software solution. We see some instabilities when clearing the control by navigating to “about:blank”; would be interesting to know if that is related to the issue you describe in this post.
What type of instabilities?
That said, I’ve found numerous issues! The control does not operate in the expected manners when you start considering all the limitations Microsoft has imposed upon it (trusted domains, no mixed contents, some JS not working, …).
Hi Daniel, when the document manager form opens for the first time the control is set to “about:blank”. When a user subsequently attached or scans a document, setting the control to the local file name will sometimes not work, i.e. the control stays blank. It is actually a straightforward port from the old IE 11 version that never had this issue.
Any chance you can provide a sample (so it can be provided to the Dev Team)? If so, use my contact page and I’ll e-mail you back.
Hallo, Daniel…
i want to show some pages, documents, pic from our sharepoint-online account : mycompany.sharepoint.com.
i addeted the adresses to the trusted domain table, but the objects will not appear in the control, it allways opens them in the Edge-application. With other websites it works. Can you confirm this behavior ?
I’m afraid I do not use SharePoint, so I can’t validate things for you.
Have you tried accessing the files using the https://msaccess/ protocol prefix?
What about mapping a drive to the SharePoint library and then they should would as normal local files.
https://msaccess/ only works with local or maped drive letter, not in combination with websites adresses. Also this would work ony for pdf.docments and pictures, not for websites.
The additional problem is that microsft trys to make it impossible to map sharepoint librarys to network. The force to “sync” by usere selected sharepointfolders to the personal-users directory. So this is nothing for an access mulituser FE, an also nothing folders with some thoused files. In a cumbersome way it’s still possible, but this practical for the normal-users.
MS trys everything to move us to their holy cloud, but the new Edge-Control isn’t possible to show their own circus. The old control could do this, but now it’s to old to show modern websites, and has authentification problems to sharepoint.com. For me this is a bug or lack of basic function.
I know you can map a SharePoint library, but beyond that I can’t truly comment.
I also know people commented about authentication in the past and it requires adding the URLs of all of the redirections to the Trusted Domains table. I agree, the Modern Web Browser control is far from good!
All I can comment is if you feel up to it, post a suggestion in the Feedback Portal regarding the issue, but don’t hold your breath.