(Sorry, this is off-topic, but interesting, at least to me...)
Well, yes, of course Microsoft is trying to force MSIE on us. And they will do the last little push when they release Windows 98, and it's built-in.
I guess what I meant when I said it's too much trouble to package the components, is that MSIE represents, in effect, an "in between" release of Windows. It would be a lot of work to package these components all up separately, and document their inter-dependance. (As far as I know, this is NOT documented anywhere.)
What they really would need would be some kind of wizzard to tell you what components you need to package with your product.
All this for a problem that goes away when they release Windows 98.
I am using these components in a side project I've been working on (largely dormant the past couple of months) that is somewhat similar to yours. I'm sure you've seen it. (http://stockclub.com/scammer/) Different in the sense that it's oriented toward one specific commercial ($$$) real-time quote package, but with some very similar software needs.
My "real" job is as software architect for a product which embeds the MSIE WebBrowser control. It's amusing to see others faced with the same distribution problem that we have. :)
By the way, as far as I know, there *is* no other browser that has a DLL that can be used for HTML rendering. The best you can do with Netscape is to send DDE commands to the browser. Unfortunately, there is apparenly no way to actually embed a browser window in your own app. We are pushing for an OLE control, for what it's worth. |
