
Microsoft Confirms IE8 Can be Removed from Windows 7 - nreece
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_confirms_ie8_can_be_removed_from_windows.php
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briansmith
The headline could not be more misleading. IE8 cannot be removed, it can only
be disabled so that the user cannot execute iexplore.exe. However, any program
that makes use of the web browser control will still be able to instantiate
it. And, the user can re-enable iexplore.exe at any time.

~~~
derefr
All operating systems today need to come with _some_ library or framework that
lays out and renders HTML and CSS, whether they have a "web browser" installed
or not. It's just one of those basic things developers have come to expect to
be available when creating GUI software, and personally I'd hate to see it
removed as an option.

That Trident is that option makes sense to me; if it could be swapped out,
though, that'd be interesting. I wonder if an interface could be written so
that Gecko or Webkit could be used in place of mshtml.dll?

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whughes
The old Gecko ActiveX control was designed to be a drop-in replacement for the
Trident one. There was an IEPatcher which worked in some cases, though not
always:

<http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/control.htm#usingPatcher>

This is, of course, only applicable to programs which use the ActiveX control.
It's also a really old Mozilla version.

------
derefr
> Important to recognize is that while these applications can be turned off,
> meaning they are not loaded by the operating system or available for use,
> the files remain present on the hard disk in a staging area so that they can
> be easily turned back on again without the need to use installation media.

I hope there's a solution, first- or third-party, that wipes the staging
"cache" from disk. I rather like keeping what I don't need on offline media,
and, as a Mac user, I also rather like keeping down the size of my Boot Camp
partition.

~~~
whughes
Is this going to be a huge issue for you? I can see these applications taking
up 1-2G at the absolute maximum, more likely in the hundreds of MB. If those
margins are significant for you, then you're probably already going to be
seeing system slowdowns due to low disk space.

