WebBrowser control created at runtime??

[NJDubois]

I can create and place WebBrowser controls at run time no problem.

But why can't I figure out how to get one of any number of created WebBrowser controls to navigate to a website?

I have a FORM a BUTTON and TWO TEXTBOX controls at design time. I run the program and it creates a random number of WEBBROWSER controls named WebBrowser1 to WebBrowser whatever.

textbox1.text = a number, 1 - max number of created webbrowsers, determined in whatever way it is. A user changes it, a random generated number, it doesn't matter.

textbox2.text = "www.google.com"

if textbox1.text = 4 when the button is clicked,
WebBrowser4.Navigate(textbox2.text)

but what if textbox1.text could equal 35, or 1, or whatever. HOW DO I REFERENCE IT'S ASSOCIATED WEBBROWSER CONTROL?!?!?

I've spent a few hours researching this and I find page after page on creating controls, but I can't change the data of a control determined at run time, and I can't find how to anywhere.

Please help!

Much thanks for even reading this!
Nick

 

[jmcilhinney]

Please post in the forum that most closely matches the topic of your thread, not just the first one you come to. Moved.

 

[jmcilhinney]

But why can't I figure out how to get one of any number of created WebBrowser controls to navigate to a website?

I can't answer that one.

The principle is very simple. No matter what, in order to get a WebBrowser object, or any object for that matter, to do something you must have a variable that refers to it. It doesn't matter whether you create your WebBrowser at design time or in code, you must have a variable that refers to that WebBrowser control in order to get or set a property or call a method of that object.

When you add the WebBrowser in the designer the IDE will create a member variable for you, so you will usually use that. If you add the WebBrowser in code then you will have to declare a member variable yourself and assign the WebBrowser object to it, e.g.

Private myWebBrowser As WebBrowser

Me.myWebBrowser = New WebBrowser

If you're going to be creating multiple WebBrowsers then a single WebBrowser variable won't be sufficient. Most likely you'd use a List(Of WebBrowser) so you can add new objects whenever you like, e.g.

Private myWebBrowsers As New List(Of WebBrowser)

Me.myWebBrowsers.Add(New WebBrowser)

You can then refer to each individual WebBrowser object in the List by index.

 

[JohnH]

Set a Name for the control and you can get a reference later by using the string indexer of the Controls collection you added the control to.

Dim c As Control = Me.Controls("web23")

Other arrangments could be better, like keeping your own collection/dictionary as mentioned. Also sometimes you could store info various places for easy access, for example using the Tag property of a TabPage, if it was not easier to just get the first (and only) index of the tabs Controls collection. How to arrange things depends on the situation, to get a better answer you have to explain that.