Architecture & Features

Table of contents:

CEF 3 summary

• supports html5 audio/video, good performance of webgl and other accelerated content
• uses multi process architecture and Chromium Content API, thus giving performance and features similar to Chrome
• V8 engine is runing in a separate process so javascript integration can be done only through asynchronous messaging between processes, in CEF 1 you can call javascript and python back synchronously
• single process is for debugging purposes only, it is unstable, it will likely be fixed in the future as Chromium for mobile devices needs a stable single-process mode

CEF 3 comes with the the latest version of Chrome.

For more information on CEF architecture see this wiki page on the Chromium Embedded project: http://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/wiki/Architecture

CEF 3 features ported in CEF Python 3

• Frame object
• Browser object
• ApplicationSettings
• BrowserSettings
• DownloadHandler
• JavascriptBindings
• JavascriptCallback
• Python callbacks
• JavascriptContextHandler (partially)
• JavascriptDialogHandler
• RequestHandler
• Request object
• WebPluginInfo
• Cookie
• CookieManager
• CookieVisitor
• LoadHandler
• RenderHandler
• ResourceHandler
• Response object
• WebRequest and WebRequestClient
• LifespanHandler (partially)

CEF 3 features not yet ported to CEF Python 3

• context menu handler & menu model - API is not provided, but context menu is configurable, see ApplicationSettings.context_menu
• dialog handler
• dom manipulation - won't be implemented as it was deprecated and has memory leaks. The recommended way is to manipulate DOM through javascript and report to python through javascript bindings.
• focus handler
• geolocation & geolocation handler
• origin whitelist
• proxy handler
• render process handler
• resource bundle handler
• custom scheme
• stream reader & writer for request response
• trace notifications & trace event
• web plugin (WebPluginInfo already implemented)
• xml reader
• zip reader

CEF 1 summary

• single process architecture
• more feature complete API than in CEF 3 (as of the moment)
• html5 audio and video support was removed (see Issue 18)
• uses Webkit API
• reduced memory usage and closer integration with the client application
• reduced performance with certain types of accelerated content and crashes due to plugins like Flash running in the same process.

CEF 1 is currently in maintenance mode and the latest version available includes Chrome 27.

Known problems in CEF 1

Flash plugin will crash on Linux, see Issue 553 in CEF Issue Tracker. However, Pepper Flash Player might work in CEF 3 on Linux (not yet tested).

CEF 1 features ported to CEF Python 1

• Frame object
• Browser object
• application settings
• browser settings
• javascript bindings
• javascript callbacks & python callbacks
• display handler
• keyboard handler
• lifespan handler (partially)
• load handler
• render handler
• request handler (partially)
• Response object
• javascript context handler (partially)
• ContentFilter for resource response
• Request object
• StreamReader for request response
• WebRequest
• Cookie class
• CookieManager class
• CookieVisitor callbacks
• DownloadHandler
• DragHandler
• DragData

CEF 1 features not yet ported to CEF Python 1

• dom manipulation - won't be implemented as it was deprecated and has memory leaks. The recommended way is to manipulate DOM through javascript and report to python through javascript bindings.
• find handler
• focus handler
• geolocation & geolocation handler
• jsdialog handler
• menu handler
• plugin info
• origin whitelist
• javascript extensions
• permission handler for extensions
• print handler
• proxy handler
• resource bundle handler
• custom scheme
• web plugin
• xml reader
• zip reader
• zoom handler