Chromium Embedded Framework
lastmod 2025-01-09created 2024-09-132 edits
The Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is an open-source framework that includes a Chromium-based layout engine.
It is developed in C++ and can be used to build desktop applications that run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Categories
About
A framework for building apps that embed a Chromium-based browser.
It is a BSD-licensed open-source project based on Google's Chromium project, started in 2008 by Marshall Greenblatt. Unlike the Chromium project, which mainly focused on Google Chrome app development, it focuses on embedded browser use cases in third-party apps. CEF lets you escape the underlying complexity of Chromium's code through high-level stable APIs, purpose-specific releases, and binary distributions. The default CEF implementation requires little or no integration work from the user. More than 100 million instances are currently in use. Some of them are listed on the wiki page. Some use cases are as follows.
- Embedding an HTML5-compatible web browser in an existing native application
- Hosting a UI developed primarily with web technologies in a lightweight native shell application
- Rendering offscreen web content using your own drawing framework
- Running automated tests of web properties or applications
CEF supports many languages and operating systems and can be easily integrated into new or existing applications. It was designed with performance and ease of use in mind. The base framework is provided as a native library in C and C++, and isolates the application from Chromium and its implementation details. It provides tight integration between the browser and the app, including custom plugins, protocols, JavaScript objects, and JavaScript extensions. Applications can control resource loading, navigation, menus, printing, and more, while using the same performance and HTML5 technologies as the Google Chrome web browser.
Many individuals and organizations contribute time and resources to CEF development, but participation from the wider community is always welcome.