[Bug] BlazorWebView with WindowsForms: keyboard and focus issues

Description

Below are some usability issues I’ve discovered while paying with BlazorWebView using WinForms and .NET v6.0.100-preview.7 SDK. A BlazorWebView/WinForms repo to reproduce. I haven’t tried it with WPF or WinUI yet, but I’d expect the same behavior:

• Windows system accelerators (<kbd>Alt-F4</kbd>, <kbd>Alt-Space</kbd>) don’t work when the focus is inside BlazorWebView.
• The arrow keys don’t work inside HTML textarea within BlazorWebView
• Upon tabbing out of the native WinForms TextBox with <kbd>Tab</kbd> the focus (and the cursor) disappears . Then It takes an extra <kbd>Tab</kbd> to move the focus into BlazorWebView.
• The native WinForms menu is not dismissed when the focus moves into BlazorWebView (by clicking inside it). So I can type inside HTML textarea while the menu is still shown:
  .

I realize that some of these (like lingering menus) might be specific to WebView2 + WinForms. However, in a similar non-Blazor WebView2 app (just static HTML with WebView2 runtime v92.0.902.84 and SDK 1.0.955-prerelease) at least the arrow keys, <kbd>Alt-F4</kbd> and tabbing work as expected.

Perhaps, BlazorWebView just needs to update the WebView2 SDK dependencies? I’ve tried that but I’m getting this error:

System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'Void Microsoft.Web.WebView2.WinForms.WebView2.add_AcceleratorKeyPressed(System.EventHandler`1<Microsoft.Web.WebView2.Core.CoreWebView2AcceleratorKeyPressedEventArgs>)'.

Steps to Reproduce

• Install .NET 6.0.100-preview.7 SDK: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/thank-you/sdk-6.0.100-preview.7-windows-x64-installer
• Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/noseratio/BlazorWebViewWinFormsApp .
• Run: dotnet run

Expected Behavior

Functional keyboard accelerators and focus handling.

Actual Behavior

See the above.

Basic Information

• Version with issue: x64 Windows 10 v19043.1165 and .NET v6.0.100-preview.7

Reproduction Link

https://github.com/noseratio/BlazorWebViewWinFormsApp

[noseratio]

Thanks for an update, looking fwd to those WebView2 fixes. I’m lobbying to open-source the .NET components of WV2, so the community could help with the issues like that 🙂

Also, well done on BlazorWebView. It may indeed become a great alternative to Electron for folks who want to develop desktop apps with C#. I was a bit skeptical when I approached it first, but as I’m learning more, I believe it has a lot of potential. Hopefully, it’ll be ready for its full prime with .NET 7 🙂

[Eilon]

Plus, as it seems you’ve certainly noticed, these issues at least mostly (if not entirely?) seem to be due to WebView2, per the issues and comments you’ve logged:

• Keyboard and focus issues with WebView2 and WinForms on .NET preview 7 https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/WebView2Feedback/issues/1703
• WPF Key Forwarding from WebView2 to Host application? https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/WebView2Feedback/issues/468

We have regular communication with the WebView2 folks so I’m hopeful we can get these issues resolve because I agree it does make the WebView2 hybrid app experience unusable for keyboard scenarios (and boy oh boy am I myself a hardcore keyboard user, let alone many who can only use keyboard or other similar input/accessibility devices).