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Microsoft Will Ship Windows 7 in Europe With IE Unbundled
jimmi_hendrix was one of several people to note CNET's report that 'Microsoft plans to remove Internet Explorer from the versions of Windows 7 that it ships in Europe, CNET News has learned. Reacting to antitrust concerns expressed by European regulators, Microsoft plans to offer a version in Europe that has the browser removed. Computer makers would then have the option to add the browser back in, ship another browser or ship multiple browsers, according to a confidential memo that was sent to PC makers and seen by CNET News." There's also a report at Ars Technica.
You're not! Check the pirate bay after the european release is made. Furthermore, look to those Windows - LITE versions that people put together. They are also quite effective.
My question is if they are removing the blue E icon or actually removing the rendering engine? My guess is the former. The way things stand, I imagine many apps would be impossible to run without the rendering engine. A simple test would be to open a file browser and then type in a URL to see if an internet web page can be shown. If it's there, you will see it that way.
A simple test would be to open a file browser and then type in a URL to see if an internet web page can be shown. If it's there, you will see it that way.
MS got rid of the tie between Windows Explorer and IE with Windows Vista; trying to view a local folder in IE opens Windows explorer, and trying to view an internet URL in Windows Explorer opens your default browser.
My question is if they are removing the blue E icon or actually removing the rendering engine?
My reading is that they basically can't remove the rendering engine completely; too much stuff depends on it. HTML is behind the entire Windows Help system for instance, and I can't see them either altering the technology that radically or disabling help. There's also a lot of third party software (e.g. Steam) that uses it.
I don't know how much IE adds to the rendering engine though. It may be the case that MSHTML (what's used for the help system and such) is actually pretty lightweight and IE adds quite a bit, so this split is actually quite meaningful, but I doubt that's the case.
The article submitter fails to note the EU is not necessarily on board with this as they've been circulating a survey asking PC companies about how many and what browsers should be pre-installed as well as asking questions about if MS is pressuring them on the issue.
Updates in Vista uses a seperate contral panel applet, presumably its the same in 7.
Big difference that you seem to be willfully ignoring. Neither Apple or any Linux vendor strong armed OEMs into exclusively installing their browser.
Geez, how about just making the help consist of GODDAMN HTML FILES?
Um, they basically are. They're zipped together somehow because help usually has multiple pages and they want it in one file, but that's what they are behind the scenes.
They point is how do you display that HTML? It's that which we are talking about. Right now Windows uses MSHTML to display them. The APIs under discussion would allow Mozilla to hook up Gecko so that it could render your help files (which would maybe allow you to totally remove IE stuff from the system), or someone to hook up Webkit to display help files, etc.
(Another interpretation of what you say is to just have the web browser itself display help files; this has a number of drawbacks, not the least of which is that without a browser in there by default, you wouldn't be able to read help. And it's exactly that situation which is why I'm postulating that MS isn't going to remove MSHTML.)