IE as a browser does suck, no argument there. However, I (and I'm sure many other Windows devs too) find the .NET WebBrowser control very useful - it's a easy drop-in control that's part of the .NET framework. It shares a lot with with IE codebase, so if IE gets killed off, would that include the control? It certainly would no longer be updated.
I've looked in depth at the embedded Chromium project, but there's simply TOO much baggage with that making it total overkill when all you want to do is render some HTML in a line-of-business application.
There is a .net control now that lets you embed edge. The old IE control was annoying with it's default to ie7 impersonation mode that could only be controlled via registry settings
We use the IWebBrowser control in a C++ application. Do you know if that will be killed off as well? I kind of doubt it because of Microsoft's history of supporting stuff forever, but the new Microsoft isn't as generous.
They've already announced that the ability to generate class files in Visual Studio from tlb or dll files is going away.
They're not going to kill off IE, it's the only browser on server/ltsb SKUs. They've said that edge is a no go for those because of how frequently edge gets updates compared to the os.
Why they can't figure out how to update the browser independently of the OS is beyond comprehension. IE and Edge are the only non-evergreen browsers which is probably they are the most problematic to target. I develop primarily in Firefox, but I never have bugs pop up in Chromium or WebKit browsers, only IE and Edge.
I thought because `iexplore.exe` is a thin wrapper around `mshtml.dll`. I'm not sure how thin, but most of the functionality is in that and maybe other DLLs.
Because the server is a license server in a company that has a hardware HASP key that is managed by service that exposes its interface only through localhost HTTP.
Would take no time at all to set up nginx to allow you to connect from your desktop. Likely much more secure than having an ancient browser on a server.
I've looked in depth at the embedded Chromium project, but there's simply TOO much baggage with that making it total overkill when all you want to do is render some HTML in a line-of-business application.