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title: Canvas Apps and Visualforce Pages
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# Canvas Apps and Visualforce Pages

In addition to standard canvas apps, Canvas also lets you expose a canvas app on a Visualforce page. This means you can display a canvas app anywhere you can display a Visualforce page.

Developers can use Visualforce pages to:

-   Override standard buttons, such as the New button for accounts, or the Save button for contacts
-   Override tab overview pages, such as the Accounts tab home page
-   Define custom tabs
-   Embed components in detail page layouts
-   Create dashboard components or custom help pages
-   Customize, extend, or integrate the sidebars in the Salesforce Console (custom console components)

To host a canvas app on a Visualforce page, use the `<apex:canvasApp>` component.

**note:** The Canvas framework includes methods that you can use to circumvent the navigational limitations of the iframe that contains a canvas app, without using Visualforce pages. These methods offer a streamlined alternative for controlling navigation to or from canvas apps in the Salesforce app. For details, see [Salesforce Mobile App Navigation Methods for Use with Canvas Apps](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/chatter/canvas-apps-salesforce1-navigation-methods.md).

## Known Limitations

Canvas apps embedded in Visualforce using `<apex:canvasApp>` serialize parameters as part of a redirect URL during load. If the combined size of parameters exceeds 8KB, this may cause the redirect to fail with a 500 Internal Server Error. This is due to a header size limit.

To avoid the header size limit issue:

-   Pass only small tokens or ID's via parameters.
-   Let your Canvas app fetch large payloads server-side.
-   Consider using signedRequest mode, which avoids redirects and uses POSTS.

-   **[Visualforce Page Code Examples](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/canvas-app-vf-code-example.md)**  


    You can display a canvas app on a Visualforce page in a number of ways.

-   **[Visualforce Considerations](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/canvas-app-vf-considerations.md)**  

-   **[apex:canvasApp Component](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/canvas-app-vf-component-ref.md)**  


    Use this component to display a canvas app on a Visualforce page. The table below lists the component attributes.

-   **[Using Events between a Visualforce Page and a Canvas App](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/resizing-in-vf/canvas-vf-app-resizing.md)**  


**See Also**  


-   [Visualforce Page Code Examples](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/canvas-app-vf-code-example.md)
-   [Visualforce Considerations](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/canvas-app-vf-considerations.md)
-   [apex:canvasApp Component](https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/canvas-framework/guide/canvas-app-vf-component-ref.md)