Simple navigation in Windows 8 web view - windows

Question

I'm working on porting a Windows Phone 8 application to tablet, and I've bumped into a problem with the WebView API. In Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.1, the WebBrowser and WebView controls both have a GoBack() method. However, I need my application to be compatible for Windows 8, whose WebView API does not have such a method. Are there any alternatives/workarounds that anyone's used for Windows 8 apps?

Answer 1

In the end I just ended up writing a wrapper for the WebView to manage the navigation stack. Here's the relevant code, for anyone who's interested. Note that I only needed to handle backwards navigation, so I used a Stack. If forwards navigation is also required, it'd probably make sense to replace the Stack with a List and store the index of the current page instead.
public class WebViewWrapper
{
private Stack<Uri> _navigationStack;
private Uri _currentUri;
public WebView WebView { get; private set; }
public bool CanGoBack
{
get { return _navigationStack.Count > 0; }
}
public WebViewWrapper(WebView _webView)
{
_navigationStack = new Stack<Uri>();
WebView = _webView;
WebView.LoadCompleted += (object s, NavigationEventArgs e) => {
if (_currentUri != null)
{
_navigationStack.Push(_currentUri);
}
_currentUri = e.Uri;
};
}
public void GoBack()
{
if (CanGoBack)
{
_currentUri = null;
WebView.Navigate(_navigationStack.Pop());
}
}
}
An example of usage would be as follows:
// Code behind for a view called WebBrowserPage
public sealed partial class WebBrowserPage : Page
{
private WebViewWrapper _webViewWrapper;
public WebBrowserPage()
{
// webView is a WebView in the xaml with x:Name="webView"
_webViewWrapper = new WebViewWrapper(webView);
}
// Other code for navigating to a Uri specified in a ViewModel.
// Event handler for a back button press
private void BackButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
if (_webViewWrapper.CanGoBack)
{
_webViewWrapper.GoBack();
}
else
{
// Code that executes a command in the ViewModel to leave the WebBrowserPage
}
}
}

Answer 2

WinRT XAML Toolkit has a WebBrowser control that does some of that, but I haven't used it in any app, so I can't vouch for its quality.