Have you ever wanted to create your own web browser? Not a bad idea considering that all the data such a browser needs to know about you will reside on your own computer.
Follow the simple steps below to create a free basic browser that reflects your personal taste. We’ll be using Visual Studio for this activity, but there’s very little code to deal with.
Installation and Updates
To get started, you need to download Visual Studio Community Edition from Microsoft which is still absolutely free. The software is frequently updated, so you should migrate to its latest version. Visual Studio can be a bit clunky and overly large, but it has plenty of free templates, including web browsers.
Once the installation is complete, you can launch the application directly.
To Create a Browser Application
Select the option to create a new project. Scroll down to the Windows Forms app in the .NET Framework. Here it is useful to remember the fundamental definition of a web browser. It’s nothing more than a form that calls up websites and documents and presents them for clearer viewing.
Give the web browser a name and click “Create”. For my private browser, I named it “Fantastic Browser”.
Once the program starts, you will see an empty form with no data. Click on “Toolbox” on the left panel. You can also enable it from the “View” icon. Scroll down to select “WebBrowser”.
There are two panes you need to edit in the workspace. One of them is a “Properties” panel that contains all the details about the browser window. Here you can decide the margins and the size of the general browser window, the tabs and whether or not to enable the scrollbars.
The other panel is the main form. Here you will find a small menu item that you need to click on: “Undock to parent container”.
Once you click “Undock”, you can manually resize the borders of the browser window. This part will show the display contents of the website. Save the application and proceed to the next step.
Creating Browser Menu Items
To create browser menu items, you must use an option from the box toolbar called “Button”. Click on the text and drag it to any position in the main form window.
Similarly, you will also need a “Text Box” menu item from the Toolbox to receive the websites that want to visit.
Once you’ve arranged all the buttons and the text box, you can arrange them so they resemble a basic browser window. Visual Studio arranges the buttons symmetrically, allowing you to create equal spacing between them without any problem.
Buttons’ shape, size, and colors can be further modified from their “Property”.
In the next step, go to the individual button properties and rename the buttons. I used “Back” for “back”, “Forward” for “forward”, “Refresh” and named the home button after my own name. You can use small iconic images, enable tabs between buttons, and do other minor modifications.
Double-click any of the renamed buttons to edit their code from their default location. For the back button, you’ll use webbrowser1.GoBack() to control the action that should follow a button click.Moving forward will be webbrowser1.GoForward() and likewise there are options to go home and fetch.
To use the text box to type URLs, use webBrowser1 .navigate( textbox.text). You can use any given URL for your “home” button.
Run and Save Browser
Once you have finished the breadcrumb for all your buttons and text boxes, you can create additional options from the “toolbox”. I chose a “horizontal scrollbar”. There are also options for search engines, but no omnibox at the moment. However, you can always create more options by learning a little more about Visual Studio.
Click the “Start” button at the top of the Visual Studio window. It will run the browser inside the form project. You can test your results for your home page or a search engine. Also, if you maximize the browser window, it won’t feel any different from a normal browser.
Remember to save your browser project as a .csproj program. You can launch it directly from Visual Studio in the future. You can further change the Windows “Settings” and “Personalization” icon.
Conclusion
If you want maximum privacy, nothing beats having your own browser. The above procedure will help you create and run your own browser from your PC or Mac. If you want more options, Visual Studio has some really advanced programs, but it requires improved coding knowledge.
Will you be creating your own browser soon? What other programs have you used to create them? We look forward to hearing from you.
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