Activating Fixed Version using Webview2 in C# (Webform)

Question

I'm trying to learn to create an app using C# utilizing the WebView2 element. Because I'm trying to distribute this to computers that may not have Edge, I'm trying to utilize the fixed version of the Webview2 runtime. I believe I uploaded the files to the correct directories and ensured that the location for the "userDataFolder" was located in a writable file, but I'm still getting the following error message:

Microsoft.Web.WebView2.Core.WebView2RuntimeNotFoundException: 'Couldn't find a compatible Webview2 Runtime installation to host WebViews.'

I stored the files for the fixed version runtime here: C:\Users\janif\source\repos\browserPackageV1\browserPackageV1\bin\Debug\net5.0-windows\browserPackageV1.exe.WebView2\Microsoft.WebView2.FixedVersionRuntime.94.0.992.50.x86

Here's my code:

'''

    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        webBrowser.Source = new Uri("https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/");
        InitWebView();
        
    }

    String locOfRuntime = @"\\browserPackageV1\\bin\\Debug\\net5.0-windows\\browserPackageV1.exe.WebView2";
    String locOfSavedState = @"\\browserPackageV1\\bin\\Debug\\net5.0-windows\\temp";

    async void InitWebView()
    {
        await CoreWebView2Environment.CreateAsync(
            browserExecutableFolder: locOfRuntime,
            userDataFolder: locOfSavedState);
    }

'''

Am I missing something? Should I be directing the "browserExecutableFolder" somewhere else? Do I have the wrong file location syntax? I'm currently a student and I'm trying to teach myself how to do this, but all the documentation about this has been really fuzzy and I've come to a wall. I've seen Microsoft's documentation using "WebView2.EnsureCoreWeb2Async", and have tried that (see below):

'''

    async void InitWebView()
    {
        await joinBrowser.EnsureCoreWebView2Async
            (
            Microsoft.Web.WebView2.Core.CoreWebView2Environment.CreateAsync
                (
                browserExecutableFolder: locOfRuntime,
                userDataFolder: locOfState,
                CoreWebView2EnvironmentOptions options = null
                )
            );

    }

'''

...but this too is not working. VS is not accepting "CoreWebView2EnvironmentOptions options = null". Can someone please help me here? I can't find anything clear-cut out there that would actually make the fixed version of WebView2 work.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For a similar setup to yours, we stored the executables situated in a 'lib' folder in the main project folder in Visual Studio.

When we can then initialise the call to webview2 like this:

var newView = new WebView2()
{
   CreationProperties = new CoreWebView2CreationProperties
   {
      BrowserExecutableFolder = "lib/Microsoft.WebView2.FixedVersionRuntime.91.0.864.71.x64"
   }
};

That makes for a far easier URL reference to webview2 than what you're having to use. You're calling webview2 differently to we are, but you can see the URL is far easier to use this way.