Ok, I will make a polite request. Does anybody know what "integrating the browser with the OS" really means? I've posted plenty of times what I thought. The browser has a COM interface, and it can be called to display stuff from other programs. That is, it's "integrated with the OS" just like Word or Excel. I'd guess there's also a bunch of stuff in the various little utilities that constitute the GUI for the OS that generated the html. You can call it OS code if you want, I guess you can call everything in the bunch of the software that comes on the Windows disk OS code if you want, but it all runs at the application level, like Word and Excel, too. Of course, code is the wrong word these days too, now it's all "technology".
System level stuff, the core OS kernel, the stuff that runs in system mode in the microprocessor and has access to memory mapping and the device registers, yup, you gotta be careful with that, that code screws up and your machine crashes or hangs. Which is why I tend to get annoyed with Windows 95, I figure that something that gets screwed up and can be fixed by reformat, reinstall must be something wrong with the OS. The way operating systems are supposed to work, anything running at app level can kill itself, but it shouldn't kill the machine.
I'll even read something from www.microsoft.com, if it actually explains things and doesn't go off into purest marketese like the DNS/DNA stuff that's floating around these days. Integrated is just a word, and like most words in the Microsoft context it's a bit problematic pinning down what it means. Near as I can tell, integrated, bundled, tied are all pretty equivalent, but I'll accept correction.
Cheers, Dan. |
