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Windows 7 Lets You Uninstall IE8
CWmike writes "A just-leaked build of Windows 7 lets users remove Internet Explorer, the first time that Microsoft has offered the option since it integrated the browser with Windows in 1997, two bloggers reported today. The move might have been prompted by recent charges by the European Union that Microsoft has stifled browser competition by bundling IE with its operating system, the bloggers speculated. One solution under consideration by the EU would require Microsoft to disable IE if the user decided to install a different browser, such as Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome. Microsoft had no comment when asked to confirm whether Windows 7 will let users dump IE8 or whether the option was in reaction to the EU charges."
... for some definitions of "remove". I seriously doubt that Microsoft has decoupled the "internet explorer" feature set from the operating system, and would be surprised if "removal" meant any more than it already does ... hiding an icon.
RFC2119
And who has money on the OS not working right afterwards?
Seriously? That's absolute crap. Me installing firefox does NOT mean I want IE disabled. The EU needs to get its head out of its a**. If I want IE disabled, I'll disable it.
Posting anonymously for reasons that are soon to be obvious.
No astroturf here, but on my 8 months removed from bleeding edge computer, (no I7 chip), windows 7 is leaps and bounds ahead of vista. Its *almost* on par with windows XP. Perhaps with a bit of learning, I could hollow out a corner in my cold dead heart for windows 7.
Anywho, its not AS bad as people are saying, in fact, it carries on XP's (well, much more linux's than XP's) tradition of only bugging you for admin rights when you need admin rights.
I'm not going to go as far and say that it will replace my XP install for gaming, but it is a good lowest common demoninator operating system that suzie q from accounting won't be miffed at.
Who knows, if w7 comes with firefox by default, the OS might be on track to reducing the amount of drive by infections. (I've received zero pings from worm infections on my antivirus from behind my router, and zero pings from when i was behind a dsl router that had built in NAT by default.)
Now about those pesky email spread viruses...
Why remove the core libraries? We develop several applications which rely on it, and users will blame us if app doesn't work out of the box. FWIW, I don't care what browser comes with Windows as long as it comes with one.
Does it let you format the drive the current windows instance is running from?
It seems the astroturfers are going crazy trying to confuse the issue. This has nothing to do with end users. The important thing the EU is trying to get is for OEM's to have the ability to replace IE with (or add to IE) Firefox or some other browser.
Let's repeat this carefully:
1. An OEM (like Dell) must be able to load the computer with arbitrary programs, some of which compete with Microsoft's world domination plans, without Microsoft being able to punish them by changing the terms of their OEM contract.
2. This has NOTHING to do with what users do with their machine after they get it home. Astroturfers are trying to say this has something to do with installing alternative browsers, or some kind of installation switch to allow the users to choose, or other bullshit. That is just to make it sound like the EU is forcing the machines to be "hard to use". In fact it is making the machine easier to use because it allows end users to not have to do the "hard" installation step, this difficulty is in fact a major part of Microsoft's lock-in.
3. Yes the IE libraries are not going away. They cannot, as other programs use them and expect them. This is not relevant as the browser that people are using to talk to the outside world is not calling these libraries.
4. It does sound like the truth is that IE is somewhat more "integrated" than just the existence of libraries, and thus Microsoft had to do some work so that everything works if the ie.exe file is missing (such as apparently removing the ability to choose it as the default browser if it is missing). Good for them, they are obeying the rules.
Posting anonymously for reasons that are soon to be obvious.
Huh? I'm sorry, this isn't obvious at all. Is it because you made a pro-windows post and think you're going to get modded down? From what I've seen in my time here, well-thought-out posts that defend any OS seldom get modded down. Occasionally you'll get one or two downmods from zealots, but those will generally be corrected by later mods.
(I won't get into the silliness of posting anonymously to protect a fictitious karma number in the first place...
I normally use Firefox, but there are still a lot of web sites out there with JavaScript that only works properly under IE, so I keep IE handy to access those sites. I don't uninstall Safari just 'cause I use Firefox on my Mac, why should I uninstall IE just 'cause I use Firefox on my PC?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Maybe I shouldn't rely on any sort of Library? Bundle my own browser, GUI toolkit, Shell? audio/video codecs? Hell, how about my own HAL?
Do you know a how long it takes to get permission to use or even link users to download a piece of software? So many potential liability issues that a multibillion dollar product has to deal with?
Idealist heaven for you as it might be, it's pure hell for the developers.
Safari comes with OSX.
Please come back with an educated opinion once you know what MS's crime is. There is no law against bundling a Web browser with an OS. There is a law against undermining a market by tying a monopolized market with an un-monopolized market.
This is a big stink about nothing.
How would you know? You admit you don't understand what MS is doing that is illegal. So how would you know they aren't guilty or that the law is not a just and important one?
They just need to create a new hh.exe executable (or whatever is used to open those help files in the background) and list it as important update for a specific application (Office, whatever) in Windows Updates.
The updated help application can very well use a custom made DLL file or several DLL files or internal code to render the contents of the help file. A simple library capable of showing text, links and jpg/gif images on a window is not that hard to do.
As long as these DLL files are only used by this help application I don't care.
It's not our fault that Microsoft intentionally did the help system and other Windows systems around IE to lock users into it. Users shouldn't suffer because of it.
Maybe you're too young but in WIndows 95, there was already a help system implemented (with HLP files, not the CHM files) that allowed people to go between help pages easily but didn't use IE.
Um, any decision Linus makes on the Kernel doesn't really affect speed or make the entire OS feel full of cruft. If Canonical decides to totally screw up something, I can apt-get remove it and reinstall a different version with no problem. Ok, sure if you disagree with EVERYTHING Canonical does apt-get remove might not work for you, but thats why there are 100s other distros. But for almost anything Canonical can screw up, a fix is just about 3 commands away, whereas when MS screws up it takes hours to remove.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
i'm not sure why people think ubuntu is any more bloated than any other mainstream linux distro.
Canonical are basically going to get criticised no matter which approach they take: if they don't go for the kitchen-sink approach then Ubuntu isn't casual user friendly and shame on them for making people rely on package management; when it does it's considered too bloated and crufty.
It's a no-win situation, someone's always going to gripe.
How about when IE crashes it DOESN'T take down file explorer with it? That is my single biggest non -security gripe with IE and the most obvious noticeable flaw in this embed-ie-in-everything approach
So the same code that should be removed should be moved instead. OK, I can grok that.
I'm quite a bit older than '95, having cut teeth on Windows 2.x (Excel). I much preferred DOS, as did most of the sane.
But .HLP had its own set of issues, primarily around authoring and maintenance, and the indexing sucked. And under the hood it was basically a case of supporting a bastardised HTML anywhere. I think I prefer having 1 language, and one codebase.
Also it occurred to me after I posted that if you ensure Windows has no method of interpreting HTML out of the box, then you will assuredly end up with tens or hundreds of different HTML engines. Each must be updated, patched and managed. I don't believe this is a reasonable approach. HTML is common enough that I believe it should be a basic part of a client OS.