Latest MyIE2 Release Includes Experimental Support for GeckoWednesday December 24th, 2003The latest version of the MyIE2 browser, released today, includes an option to use Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine in place of the standard Internet Explorer engine built into Windows. The experimental feature, which requires the Mozilla ActiveX Control to be installed, can be enabled via an option in the New Page submenu of the File menu. Thanks to Mezziah in our forums for alerting us to this development. ...suddenly it is possible to embed mozilla inside IE? Interesting stuff... Embedding Mozilla inside IE has always been possible with the Mozilla ActiveX control, but this is not what this is about. MyIE2 is an alternative shell, that happens to use the IE engine. Now it's got an option to use the Gecko engine instead. It might be useful for those who are on low end machines where XUL browsers like Firebird and Seamonkey are too slow. Think of this like K-Meleon, it's just a native interface that embeds a renderer. I'll have a look later and if it's a free download I'll give it a go. What would be really interesting (IMO) is, if one could use the Internet Explorer as usual with the gecko engine. And of course even better if the IE-controls could be completely replaced system-wide so that every app uses gecko (without knowing) Replacing IE engine with Gecko system-wide is actually very simple. The Gecko ActiveX Control must be compiled with the GUID exposed by the MS Web Browser control and then registered into the registry. The problem is that Gecko control doesn't expose all interfaces/methods/classes/properties of MS Web Control and thus many applications that are dependent on the MS Web Control would simply fail. This is a very bad idea. Yes you could recompile the Mozilla control with the IE GUID, but you run the very real risk of horking your system in the process. The Mozilla control attempts to implement the same interfaces as IE but it is not 100% compatible. Throw in some ActiveX content, a bit of VBScript, and a strange schema or two and it would soon break. The moral is using some other controls GUID (where the U stands for UNIQUE) is a recipe for disaster. It's better to specifically patch any binary you want to try to use the Mozilla GUID. My page contains an IEPatcher program for this purpose and it does it safely. I tested the Gecko engine in MyIE2 and I conclude that it works as advertised. I went to a website that renders incorrectly in Mozilla (and Opera, for that matter), and MyIE2 with Gecko rendered it the same (incorrect) way. MyIE2, by the way has a menu which allows translation to English from several languages using WorldLingo or Babel Fish. I have not seen such an option for Mozilla or Firebird or an extencion for this. "...has a menu which allows translation to English from several languages using WorldLingo or Babel Fish..." Why don't you use "Menu/Tools/Translate"? This menu item offers English translation from French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, powered by Google. Or do you need support for other languages? |