There are two versions of Chromium Embedded Framework: CEF 1 and CEF 3.[3] Development of CEF 2 was abandoned after the appearance of the Chromium Content API.[4]
CEF 1 is a single-process implementation based on the Chromium WebKit API. It is no longer actively developed or supported.[5]
CEF 3 is a multi-process implementation based on the Chromium Content API and has performance similar to Google Chrome.[6] It uses asynchronous messaging to communicate between the main application process and one or more render processes (Blink + V8 JavaScript engine). As of July 2022, it no longer supports PPAPI plugins due to removal of PPAPI, legacy Chrome Apps, and Native Client (NaCl) support from the upstream Chromium project.[7]PDF viewer support from Chromium's PDFium PDF viewer is still supported. The single-process run mode is not supported, but still present; currently is being used for debugging purposes only.[8]
On March 16, 2019, the CEF version numbering changed with the release of CEF 73.1.3+g46cf800+chromium-73.0.3683.75. The previous release on March 14, 2019, was CEF 3.3683.1920.g9f41a27. Both of these releases were based on Chromium 73.0.3683.75, however the new version numbering has the major number the same as the Chromium major version number it is based on.
CEF comes with a sample application called CefClient that is written in C++ using WinAPI, Cocoa, or GTK (depending on the platform) and contains demos of various features.[9][10] Newer versions include a sample application called CefSimple that, along with an accompanying tutorial, show how to create a simple application using CEF 3.[11]
Documentation can be found in the header files located in the "include" directory[12][13] and on wiki pages.[14]
Supported languages
The base CEF framework includes support for the C and C++ programming languages, but there are external projects that provide bindings for other languages:
AOL Desktop – web browser with integrated AOL email and IM clients
Autodesk Inventor – 3D design tool. Since version 2015, it uses CEF for the 'My Home' feature, a home-page that allows users to create new CAD files and view tutorials.
