Despite having a wide variety of browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome, which can be downloaded and installed for free on your computer, creating your own web browser guarantees greater control over how you want to surf the Internet. With your personal web browser you can decide not only the graphics but also add custom buttons and features. Visual Basic is one of the most used programming languages to create web browsers.
Steps
Step 1. Install Visual Basic on your computer by downloading it from the Visual Basic Developer center site or using the installation disc
Step 2. Start Visual Basic and create a new project by going to the file menu and clicking on "New Project"
Step 3. Navigate to the "Text" menu and on the page that appears select "Web Browser"
Step 4. Go to "View" in the top menu, then to "Other Windows" and click on "Toolbox"
At this point the program will show the Visual Basic Toolbox (the toolbar).
Step 5. In the toolbox, double-click the WebBrowser tool
Step 6. Press the right arrow icon at the top right and click "Undock in Parent Container"
Once this is done you will have changed the view of the form from full screen to window, displayed directly within the Visual Basic interface.
Step 7. Resize the browser to your preferred size using the clickable outline that appears around it
Step 8. Set the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) property to the website address of your choice
This will open a test web page which is used to see how web pages actually look when opened in your browser.
Step 9. Create a new button and assign it the following properties:
- The button text should be "Go".
- The button name should be "GoBtn."
Step 10. Activate the button by double clicking it
Now the "Private Sub" code will appear, insert the following code between the sub "Private" and "End" (you can replace the URL with that of any website).
WebBrowser1. Navigate (URL)
Step 11. Test the button by clicking on it
It should change the page from the test site to the site assigned to the button.
Step 12. Select the TextBox tool from the toolbox
Step 13. Drag the TextBox tool onto the web browser interface you created
Step 14. Call the "addressTxt" text box
Step 15. Go back to the button you created earlier and replace the URL with "addressTxt. Text"
This will tell the program that you want to use the button to take you to the URL you typed in the address bar you created via the TextBox tool.
Step 16. Test the address bar by visiting some websites
Step 17. From the Visual Basic interface, save your web browser as a program by selecting the "Save" option in the File menu
Advice
- You don't have to program your browser yourself just to benefit from the custom configuration. Many popular browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome allow you to customize browser appearance and options such as wallpapers, addons and applications. However, the customization possibilities of these software remain limited.
- If you want to create your own web browser but don't want to use Visual Basic you could try programs like Q-R Webbrowser Maker and Flock Social Web Browser Make. These programs give you the ability to program your own customized web browser starting from a set of predefined features and codes.
