Consequences of the development of the European edition of Windows 7

Question

Apparently, in Europe, Microsoft plans to ship Windows 7 without preinstalling IE8 . Many commercial applications in which I was a developer used IE in some way, so it bothers me if IE8 needs to be installed as part of our applications now.

Does this mean that applications use ...

• WindowsForms WebBrowser Component
• WPF WebBroswer Control
• No deployment without communication
• IE as an ActiveX Control
• View XPS
• possibly other API / COM developer components.

... will no longer work out of the box on Win 7 in Europe? Or did MS discover a hidden way to leave the core IE components in the OS and simply uninstall the browser application?

Answer 1

Straight from the mouth of a horse from Microsoft: Best ISV Techniques for Windows 7 E :

What are the common impacts of the Windows 7 E releases that you have seen in applications - especially those that rely on WebOC?

During our application compatibility testing, we found that the vast majority of applications run Windows 7 E without any change. This includes applications that use many Internet networks. Implementation methods of the platform (including WebBrowser management, Trident hosting, and HTML Help).

My Windows application (WPF, Win Forms, Java, etc.) uses the browser management web interface. Is there a compatibility issue?

Everything should work properly. However, we saw some problems when applications directly depend on a specific browser. In particular, if you use the web browser control to allow the application to open new windows that do not respect users' default browser choices, you may see some problems.

Answer 2

While I have nothing to hide what I am saying, it’s hard to believe that they removed all the underlying MSHTML components. Many applications out there that use it, and they cannot work without it. I think they just uninstalled the browser application (exactly the same as when you uncheck IE8 in Windows 7 Programs and Features).

Answer 3

Given what happens if you “uninstall” MSIE in previous versions of Windows, I won’t be surprised if this is all but the executable.

The only thing MS needs to do to evade the monopoly requirement is to remove the MSIE user interface from the user interface so that they can even put the whole thing there until the user can access it directly. The rendering engine (used by browsers other than MSIE, anyway), and may still be there.

Answer 4

Turning to candidates for the release of Windows 7, the "main" browser already exists. I hope I'm not mistaken in saying that, for example, the control panel navigator uses the IE components behind ... If so, then ActiveX will still exist on a platform that can be used by third-party applications.