# Web Embeds

## Overview

If you want to embed (third-party) web content in an Electron `BrowserWindow`,
there are three options available to you: `<iframe>` tags, `<webview>` tags,
and `WebContentsView`. Each one offers slightly different functionality and is
useful in different situations. To help you choose between these, this guide
explains the differences and capabilities of each option.

### Iframes

Iframes in Electron behave like iframes in regular browsers. An `<iframe>`
element in your page can show external web pages, provided that their
[Content Security Policy](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CSP)
allows it. To limit the number of capabilities of a site in an `<iframe>` tag,
it is recommended to use the [`sandbox` attribute](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/iframe#attr-sandbox)
and only allow the capabilities you want to support.

### WebViews

> Important Note:
[we do not recommend you to use WebViews](../api/webview-tag.md#warning),
as this tag undergoes dramatic architectural changes that may affect stability
of your application. Consider switching to alternatives, like `iframe` and
Electron's `BrowserView`, or an architecture that avoids embedded content
by design.

[WebViews](../api/webview-tag.md) are based on Chromium's WebViews and are not
explicitly supported by Electron. We do not guarantee that the WebView API will
remain available in future versions of Electron. To use `<webview>` tags, you
will need to set `webviewTag` to `true` in the `webPreferences` of your
`BrowserWindow`.

WebView is a custom element (`<webview>`) that will only work inside Electron.
They are implemented as an "out-of-process iframe". This means that all
communication with the `<webview>` is done asynchronously using IPC. The
`<webview>` element has many custom methods and events, similar to
`webContents`, that provide you with greater control over the content.

Compared to an `<iframe>`, `<webview>` tends to be slightly slower but offers
much greater control in loading and communicating with the third-party content
and handling various events.

### WebContentsView

[`WebContentsView`](../api/web-contents-view.md)s are not a part of the
DOM—instead, they are created, controlled, positioned, and sized by your
Main process. Using `WebContentsView`, you can combine and layer many pages
together in the same [`BaseWindow`](../api/base-window.md).

`WebContentsView`s offer the greatest control over their contents, since they
implement the `webContents` similarly to how `BrowserWindow` does it. However,
as `WebContentsView`s are not elements inside the DOM, positioning them
accurately with respect to DOM content requires coordination between the
Main and Renderer processes.
