How To Print the WebBrowser Control (176400)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Visual Basic Control Creation Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Learning Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition for Windows 5.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Standard Edition, 32-bit, for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Professional Edition, 32-bit, for Windows 4.0
  • Microsoft Visual Basic Enterprise Edition, 32-bit, for Windows 4.0
This article was previously published under Q176400

SUMMARY

Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 includes a custom ActiveX control called WebBrowser. The WebBrowser control does not include a Print method that can be directly called from Visual Basic. Tto print the contents of the WebBrowser Control in Visual Basic, you must set the focus to the content portion of the control and a CTRL-P keystroke sequence must be sent to the control.

The difficulty with this is that the WebBrowser window is actually made up of more than one window. The window that needs to have the focus to print is the one with a class name of "HTML_Internet Explorer," and the SetFocus method sets the focus to the "SHELL DocObject View" window. Before sending a CTRL-P keystroke sequence to the WebBrowser control, the proper child window of the control must have the focus.

MORE INFORMATION

To print the control, simply follow the steps below to set focus to the correct window and initiate the SendKeys function:
  1. Start a new standard Exe project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.
  2. Add the "Microsoft Internet Controls" (shdocvw.dll) to the project.
  3. Place the WebBrowser control on the default form (Form1).
  4. Add the following code to load the default page:
          Private Sub Form_Load()
          WebBrowser1.Navigate "http://www.microsoft.com"
      End Sub
  5. Place a CommandButton on the form and change its caption to "Print." Add the following code to the Click event of the button:
          Private Sub Command1_Click()
          Dim hwnd As Long
          WebBrowser1.SetFocus
          hwnd = GetFocus
          SetFocusToBrowser (hwnd)
          SendKeys "^p"   'CTRL+P to print
      End Sub
  6. Add a module to the project, and then add the following code to it:
          Option Explicit

      Declare Function GetWindow Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
          ByVal wCmd As Long) As Long

      Declare Function GetWindowLong Lib "user32" _
          Alias "GetWindowLongA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
          ByVal nIndex As Long) As Long

      Declare Function SetFocusAPI Lib "user32" _
          Alias "SetFocus" (ByVal hwnd As Long) As Long

      Declare Function GetFocus Lib "user32" () As Long

      Declare Function SendMessage Lib "user32" _
          Alias "SendMessageA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
          ByVal wMsg As Long, ByVal wParam As Long, _
          lParam As Long) As Long

      'GetWindow constants
      Public Const GW_CHILD = 5
      'GetWindowLong constants
      Public Const GWL_STYLE = (-16)
      Public Const WS_VSCROLL = &H200000

      Sub SetFocusToBrowser(hBrowserHwnd As Long)
          Dim lStyle As Long
          Dim lResult As Long
          Dim hwnd As Long
          hwnd = hBrowserHwnd
          While (lResult = 0) And (hwnd <> 0)
              hwnd = GetWindow(hwnd, GW_CHILD)
              lStyle = GetWindowLong(hwnd, GWL_STYLE)
              lResult = lStyle And WS_VSCROLL
          Wend
          SetFocusAPI (hwnd)
      End Sub
  7. Run the project, and click Print.

REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

162719 How To Use the WebBrowser Control from Visual Basic 5.0

155969 How To Distribute the WebBrowser Control

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:7/15/2004
Keywords:kb32bitOnly kbhowto KB176400
©2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.