IE6 version using ieframe.dll

Question

I have a windows application and it is compatible with IE6 only. The application doesnt work with IE7 and IE8. Is it possible to ship the ieframe.dll for IE6 along with my installer and make the references from my application to this ieframe.dll instead of the one in system32 folder? So, when I invoke IE through my application, IE6 should be spawned and not the version that is installed in the system?

Is this possible? Or are there any more system dlls / registry entires that have to be changed / updated for this to work?

Answer 1

If ieframe.dll isn't a redistributable package, then you can't do that for legal reasons. I'd strongly recommend not doing it for technical reasons, as well (even if you could, which seems unlikely -- I'd expect lots of COM ID conflict heartache). Even if you could get it to work in the lab, doing that as part of an application install to end-user computers seems inappropriate. Rather than spending time doing that, you're probably better off using that time to start modifying your app to make it compatible with a more recent version of IE. (I'm not saying that won't take longer, just that it's probably the way to go, so apply the other time to getting started on it.)