VG.net in Internet Explorer

Post by **Frank Hileman** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 3:42 pm

It is possible to run a VG.net application in Internet Explorer, because this browser has the ability to download .net assemblies and host .net Controls. VG.net ships with a sample that does this. The object code is found in the VG.net Samples, WebControls folder. The source code is found in the Extras installation location.

Debugging such an application is not as easy as a normal windows forms application:

You must wait for an assembly to load, before you can attach a debugger. You cannot put breakpoints in start-up code, such as constructors.
Internet Explorer has an assembly cache that may mislead you into thinking you are running the latest version when you are running an older version. "gacutil.exe /cdl" will flush the download cache.
fuslogvw.exe will help you debug assembly loading.
Microsoft changed the default security policy between .net 1.1 and .net 2.0, requiring you to grant permissions to all needed assemblies on each client. This can be done with an installer.
You can connect back to the original server but you cannot easily connect to other servers, if you wish to download data dynamically.

The best way to proceed is to create a windows forms application hosting your control, and use that for most debugging.

More information:
http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewdownum/arch ... fault.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewdownum/arch ... ction.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewdownum/arch ... EHost.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewdownum/arch ... gName.aspx
http://windowsclient.net/articles/iesourcing.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms951290.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc301790.aspx
http://www.15seconds.com/Issue/030610.htm
http://www.mastercsharp.com/article.asp ... TopicID=14