Windows 7 European Edition Development Implications

Question

Apparently in Europe, Microsoft plan to ship Windows 7 without IE8 preinstalled. Many of the commercial apps I have been a developer on have made use of IE in some way or other, so I am concerned about whether we need to now install IE8 as part of our application installs.

Does this mean that applications making use of...

• The WindowsForms WebBrowser component
• The WPF WebBroswer control
• No touch deploy
• IE as an ActiveX control
• XPS Viewer
• possibly other developer API's / COM components?

...will no longer work out of the box on Win 7 in Europe? Or have MS found a sneaky way to leave core IE components in the OS, and just removed the "browser" application?

Answer 1

While I have nothing to back what I'm saying, it's hard to believe that they've removed the whole MSHTML back-end components. Many apps are out there that are using it and they'll fail to run without it. I think they have just removed the browser application (just like what happens when you uncheck IE8 in Windows 7 Programs and Features).

Answer 2

By taking a look to the release candidates of Windows 7, the "core" browser exists already. I hope I am not wrong saying that, for example, Control Panel navigator uses IE components behind... If so, then the ActiveX will still exist on the platform, usable by the 3rd party applications.

Answer 3

Considering what happens if you "remove" MSIE on previous versions of Windows, I wouldn't be surprised if it's all there except for the executable.

The only thing MS needs to do to dodge the monopoly claim is to remove the MSIE UI from the user's experience, so they could even put the entire thing in there as long as the user can't access it directly. The rendering engine (used by other browsers than MSIE, anyway) and everything could still be there.

Answer 4

Straight from the horse's mouth from Microsoft: Best ISV practices for Windows 7 E:

What general impacts of Windows 7 E editions have you seen on applications – especially ones that rely on the WebOC?

During our application compatibility testing, we’ve found that the vast majority of applications work on Windows 7 E editions without any changes. This includes applications that use many of the Internet Web Platform embedding methods (including WebBrowser control, hosting Trident, and HTML Help).

My Windows application (WPF, Win Forms, Java, etc.) uses the Web Browser control. Is there any compatibility issue?

Everything should work as expected. However, we’ve seen some issues when applications depend directly on a specific browser. In particular, if while using the Web Browser control, you allow the application to open new windows that do not respect the user’s default browser choice, you may see some issues.