| reply to OZO
Re: Firefox 3 honors Windows Security Zones... said by OZO:You've made a lot of efforts explaining what shdocvw.dll is and why it's not IE, but, at the same time, why it's an important component for an HTML browser. Let me ask you a question - why FF doesn't use that important component then? Because Firefox uses its own HTML rendering engine: Gecko. Firefox is an entire web browser with no dependencies on external components. If Firefox used shdocvw.exe, then it could become another browser that is basically a new shell on top of the core from IE (Maxthon, MyIE).
This Wikipedia article does a good job at describing the IE architecture: »en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_E···itecture
Files hosted by the Internet Explorer main executable, iexplore.exe:
- WinInet.dll: handles HTTP and FTP.
- URlMon.dll: handles MIME-type stuff.
- MSHTML.dll: contains the Trident rendering engine which is responsible for displaying the pages on-screen and handling the Document Object Model of the web pages.
- ShDocVw.dll: provides the navigation, local caching and history functionalities.
- BrowseUI.dll: responsible for the browser user interface, including the browser chrome, which houses all the menus and toolbars.
ShDocVw.dll also apparently contains the API for the Attachment Manager. I guess it made the most sense to stick a feature that deals with downloaded files in a DLL that is used by IE.
said by OZO:Some browsers (e.g. Maxthon or MyIE) do benefit from that component ( shdocvw.dll). Many web site developers will then say a big thanks for not developing and testing their sites for two different rendering engines used by IE and FF. I know they certainly will appreciate *that* simplification (there are other drawbacks though)... So, why we need yet another browser (FF.3) that is based on the same security model of IE, but offering a different rendering engine (a headache for web developers and users, who suffer from various formattings of web pages in different brothers)? Because it's good to have choice? Yes, Firefox is a different web browser with its own rendering engine. But, that's why we have web standards. Some web browsers aren't as good as others, but aside from nuances, both give you a webpage with the important stuff in the right place.
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