PRB: Trouble Inserting Non-Displayable HTML into Web Page

ID: Q185140

The information in this article applies to:

SYMPTOMS

When hosting the WebBrowser control in your applications, inserting non- displayable HTML such as script or comments does not have any affect. This occurs when using any Dynamic HTML (DHMTL) function that allows you to insert HTML, such as insertAdjacentHTML, pasteHTML, outerHMTL, and so forth.


CAUSE

When inserting non-displayable HTML, the Web page is not reparsed.


RESOLUTION

You must insert some displayable HTML so that the page will be reparsed. This displayable HTML can be hidden so that it does not actually appear on the page. You may use a SPAN or DIV tag with a display style of none to cause HTML to be hidden.


STATUS

This behavior is by design.


MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

  1. Open a new Standard EXE project.


  2. Add the WebBrowser control to your form.


  3. Add a Command Button and the following code. This code inserts an HTML comment into a Web page. For information about inserting script, please refer to the Knowledge Base article in the references section of this article. 
    
Option Explicit

Private Sub Command1_Click()
  Dim str As String

   ' Insert some HTML comments
  str = "<!-- This is a comment -->"

  WebBrowser1.Document.body.insertAdjacentHTML "BeforeEnd", str
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Load()
  WebBrowser1.Navigate "http://example.microsoft.com/WebPage.htm"
End Sub


  4. Execute the following code to check to see if the HTML was inserted. 
    
Debug.Print WebBrowser1.Document.body.outerHTML


You'll notice that in this case, the HTML was not inserted.

Resolution

Insert displayable HTML before the non-displayable HTML. Do this by using a SPAN tag with the display style set to none. 

Option Explicit

Private Sub Command1_Click()
  Dim str As String

  ' Insert some hidden HTML before the comment
  str = "<span style='display:none'>h</span>" & _
        "<!-- This is a comment -->"

  WebBrowser1.Document.body.insertAdjacentHTML "BeforeEnd", str
End Sub

Private Sub Form_Load()
  WebBrowser1.Navigate "http://example.microsoft.com/WebPage.htm"
End Sub
When you execute the statement in step 4 above, the HTML comment now appears in the document.


REFERENCES

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Q185128 Insert event handler into Web page from WebBrowser app For more information, please see the MSDN Web Workshop:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/default.asp

© Microsoft Corporation 1999, All Rights Reserved.
Contributions by Scott Roberts, Microsoft Corporation

Additional query words: insertAdjacentHTML pasteHTML outerHTML kbWebBrowser 


Keywords          : kbIE400 kbIE401 kbWebBrowser kbIE500 
Version           : WINDOWS:4.0,4.01
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: April 30, 1999