Submitted by Details are scarce at the moment, but testers familiar with the recently leaked Windows 7 build 7048 confirm that Internet Explorer 8 is now an optional component in Windows 7. This is most likely a direct consequence of the EU investigation into the bundling of IE. Still, a few questions remain.
Looking around the internet, I think Chris123NT was the first to discover it, since all the links of the Windows websites eventually lead to an entry on his blog in which he details the process. Windows 7 still installs Internet Explorer 8 by default, but you can remove it via the “Turn Windows Features On or Off” feature.
Currently, it removes all references to Internet Explorer from the operating system, while also deleting iexplore.exe. It leaves all other files intact, which most likely has something to do with the fact that other parts of the operating system rely on Trident, Internet Explorer’s rendering engine. You can’t really delete WebKit from Mac OS X either.
It’s a step in the right direction, even though I hope that to squash all doubt, Microsoft will explain this change in more detail.
In Windows 98’s installation routine it was so easy to do a custom installation and select additional components or deselect some default apps. If MS just kept it that way, the antitrust case for Windows Media Player would never have happened.
Instead MS chose to treat its users bad by making it unnecessary complicated to remove unwanted components and on top of that even getting itself in a position that’s like begging to get sued.
In 1998 nobody really wanted to remove a web browser.
There it was just Netscape and IE, and Netscape, and you could have them both, web standars were practicatly inexisting.
I did. I wanted to remove Netscape 2. You could have multiple instances of Netscape installed on the same system. In the dorm’s lab we had Netscape 2,3, & 4 installed on some computers. Then users would fire up 2 and complain when hotmail didn’t work in it. I think 3 worked at the time as 4 was pretty new. Sometimes things would look somewhat funky in Netscape or Ie, but most everything worked in either. With the exception of active x, or any other weird MS technology ( webforms I’m loooking at you!) that some crazy companies used on there intranets.
Hiev misspoke…
Please tell that to all the users of ieradicator, an inf script that allowed users to decouple IE from their Win95C inTell that to Shane Brooks whose built quite a pile of money off doing so with a tiny utility you might have heard of called “98Lite” which allowed for this functionality. You might also want to talk to some of the people in the then hopping shell replacement scene who were very much unhappy with the bloat that is and was having IE installed on their systems.
You may also wish to look into the old “Revenge of Mozilla” which allowed users to rip out IE and use Mozilla instead, although that may have come on the scene later…
–bornagainpenguin
Well, to be honest, I find it absurd to fine (or threatening to fine) Microsoft for including a web browser with their OS. Who does NOT want a browser these days? It’s just common sense to include such more-or-less mandatory applications. And of course they will include software they have control over and know the innards of. It’d be silly for them not to.
Microsoft has done a lot of bad stuff, but making up new and new reasons to fine them isn’t any better.
I think that the idea is that if companies that make and sell systems want to install a different browser, they should be allowed to replace IE with Firefox, Opera, Chrome etc.
This would allow for example, Google to pay HP or Dell to replace IE with Chrome.
I dearly hope that this happens eventually, as that is the only way that IE is going to lose its majority market share in the near future.
I think that the idea is that if companies that make and sell systems want to install a different browser, they should be allowed to replace IE with Firefox, Opera, Chrome etc.
This would allow for example, Google to pay HP or Dell to replace IE with Chrome.
But, what does it matter if IE is still installed if the default browser being shipped with the computer is f.ex. Chrome, all links open with it, and IE is only visible if you look for it in the Start menu? As far as I see, it doesn’t matter at all in practice. It only matters to people who just happen to get their pants or panties in a twist over arbitrary things.
And yes, unless Microsoft has made a deal with the OEMs then they could already ship those PCs with some alternative browser as the default one. They just don’t do it.
Do note, just because something is included by default doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, especially in the case of such a mandatory app as a web browser, and even if it is included and installed by default doesn’t mean you are forced to use it.
Oh I agree, having IE installed if there is a different default browser is fine.
I’m just rooting for every possible way for IE’s market share to decrease and better (standards compliant) browsers to gain.
You know basically why the EU commission is doing this is to at least be able to show it’s doing something in the field of cartel regulation, dealing with monopolies etc.
No matter how silly it looks, it’s their way to not go after far bigger, more powerful and dirtier corporations than Microsoft (for those of us with one leg in the non-geek universe – they do exist! 🙂 ). Whether it’s pharma, oil, arms manufacturing, chemicals corpotations dumping waste, carmakers that refuse to make their cars efficient, etc.
Edited 2009-03-04 20:49 UTC
The problem is with people whom come to associate “internet” with “the blue e”. I am not saying that if you remove the blue e they will suddenly realise where the association went wrong. It’s just that if IE is installed, it will be used by a lot of people due to the fact that IE has already gained a market share that’s large enough to make people think this way.
Elsewhere, you may see people being upset when a familiar blue-reddish foxy icon is being replaced by the groovy IceWeasel. 🙂
It’s sad how pervasive this thinking is. We had to name the Firefox icon on our Linux desktops “WEB” in order for people to stop calling the helpdesk asking how to “start the internet”.
I mean, it’s not rocket science to click on the applications menu, then internet menu, then Web Browser. But since there wasn’t a blue E on the desktop, people were lost. 
Same for e-mail. We had to rename Kontact to E-mail.
That would help keeping web developers’ motivation to follow web standards at a minimum.
Why would you take the time to fix your page if users still can launch IE to browse broken sites?
Only when they realize that a huge part of their potential visitors (clients?) would be unable to view their broken stuff at all we can expect abominations like IE-only bank and government sites to disappear.
MS chose to treat it’s users bad, by installing what people asked for? Back then, people were screaming that there was no media player installed by default. MS was being bitched at for not having one. So to answer that, they began installing Windows media Player..because it is what the customers were screaming for. No one wanted it removed, so they installed it without the removal option. Now the technical crowd screams for it to be removable, yet customers want it. That is easily proven by the flop that is Windows N.
DrillSgt astroturfed…
Really? I don’t recall this at all. I do recall wishing Microsoft would work with some of the other players to allow codecs interoperatability…
I think at that time I was either using the Sasmiki2000, as it allowed me to play pretty much everything in one player. These days I get by much happier with Media Player Classic in Windows abnd use Gnome-mplayer in Linux.
DrillSgt astrotuurfed…
Heh…funny. Mind telling me where that was for sale to home users? Well they must have offered it to their technical crowd enthusiasts, right? No…? Funny how it was a flop when it was unavailable for purchase…
–bornagainpenguin
Edited 2009-03-04 23:03 UTC
“Really? I don’t recall this at all. I do recall wishing Microsoft would work with some of the other players to allow codecs interoperatability…
I think at that time I was either using the Sasmiki2000, as it allowed me to play pretty much everything in one player. These days I get by much happier with Media Player Classic in Windows abnd use Gnome-mplayer in Linux.”
I remember it well. The only other player that I could find anywhere, at that time, was RealPlayer, which was way too expensive. I never heard of Simsiki2000, maybe that is a UK player?
“Heh…funny. Mind telling me where that was for sale to home users? Well they must have offered it to their technical crowd enthusiasts, right? No…? Funny how it was a flop when it was unavailable for purchase…”
Well, I can’t speak from experience, as I am in the US. According to a friend of mine in London, they saw it at some electronics store, in a retail box. I cannot judge the accuracy of his statement, as I have not been to the UK in about 25 years.
Edit: Had wrong time frame for when I was there last
Edited 2009-03-04 23:19 UTC
Sasami2k. IIRC it was a Korean or Japanese program with an English translastion (much like some of the earlier versions of TMPGenc were. I was linked to a download for it by a friend in the shell-replacement community and used it for about two or three years. What I remember most about it was the right-click menu controls and learning the key-commands to run the program.
On the web programs lose their nationalities so long as they are good at what they do and they have a working translation in your own language.
Thom Holwerda disagreed…
Well based on his initial statements it certainly seemed as if that was what he was doing. His second post makes him look less like a turfer and more like someone with different experiences–but to claim that everyone was begging Microsoft to bundle their media player into the OS just doesn’t ring true with what I saw during that time frame.
–bornagainpenguin
Really? I don’t recall this at all. I do recall wishing Microsoft would work with some of the other players to allow codecs interoperatability…
Well, you can’t really call yourself an Average Joe, can you? Atleast my mom would have absolutely no idea where to start if her computer came without something to play video and music with, or without a web browser. From such a point of view including such applications makes perfect sense. All Linux distros do that, too, so it’s hypocritical to complain about it.
As for interoperability..Sure, Microsoft should rather pursue that instead of trying to hinder it. But the point is, who does it benefit for Microsoft having to offer versions of their software without media player or browser? EU? Big corporations? Geeks who know how to fix any issues they might have? Or Average Joe?
Dude, your accusations of “astroturfing” really negate your arguments. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean he’s astroturfing.
It removes the main IE executable and all the shortcuts. Afaik (and I haven’t used Windows in a number of years now) you could already do that in Windows XP.
Edited 2009-03-04 19:54 UTC
But not in Vista.
Plus, many exploits piggyback on IE’s protocol / link handling. There have been exploits that use Firefox only to execute a url scheme that IE handles, and the actual exploit occurs in IE.
Just having IE on your machine is a security risk, even if you don’t use it.
On my network, Internet Explorer is not needed. We use Firefox for web browsing. But even so, we still need to patch and update Internet Explorer to avoid any 3rd party applications that utilize the IE API from potentially causing issues on our systems.
Being able to completely pull out IE and have these apps tap into another browsers interfaces sounds great. This minimizes the complexity and footprint of the installation and minimizes the need to create policies to limit access to Explorer (as its not there, nothing to be concerned with.)
Of course, that would be ideal, but I’d venture to guess there are way too many apps out there that tap into the IE API’s and once it is pulled out, there will be a LOT of pressure from other applications to install it so those applications can operate. We’ll see.
The API is staying, it is just the main executable that will be removable
I am glad that MS is giving the ability to remove IE (only because i have some machines that never go online intentionaly). BUT! there are a lot of custome programs that utalize IE specificly, a lot of legacy ones too. this is going ot cause problems because they relied on the Trident engine that powers IE.
also here is a long rant of mine:
uggg, this should be a decision left up the the OEM’s such as Dell/Hp/etc… This should not be imposed on MS to include or suport someone elses 3rd party browser, thats insane! Remember about 5 years ago when you bought a windows pc and it came with Netscape/Aol/real player? That was the companies making deals with the OEM’s to include their software, they pay the OEM’s to have it in there. Now any time a company doesn’t want to pay they just complain to the EU, why god why?! The fact of the matter is companies started offering the “do not install all this extra garbage on my PC” option and a lot of customers took it and made sure non or very little of that extra stuff is installed. The users that want it installed are not your average user, and since they have knowledge of the product they are usually capable of going and downloading it. Example: if I want Opera (and i do) I go download it once i install windows, i wouldn’t WANT windows to come with it, I would rather do it myself.
So heres the scoop: these are businesses, if you want to compete in the browser arena then DO BUSINESS! Go make a deal with whatever OEM you want, sign a contract, agree to pay, and boom your in. Don’t whine that things are unfair because you didn’t make a real effort to compete. “Oh but i have a browser thats free to download but not everyone is using it (cry), what do I do?” If you plan on making money off this thing in any way shape or form, learn how to make deals, STOP EXPECTING HAND OUTS!
/end rant
(expect typo’s)
If you read the story, it says that only iexplore.exe is deleted, not the rest of the files which power it. As such, any programs that rely on Trident will continue to function as normal.
I see your point, but I will say this. I have removed IE from my windows installs. In the embeded version of XP you don’t even have to install it (and i use that as one of my desktops). a lot of legacy apps that are hard coded to use IE and Trident (i should have thrown IE in there instead of just trident) don’t work, or throw up all sorts of wierd errors.
Well, this is probably a good thing for developers who rely on Trident under the hood. If they do remove it, I hope there’s an API underneath that’s compatable with it, or I’m gonna have to rewrite several of my AutoIt scripts that use the MSHTML library
Is there even anything in the Firefox/Chrome world that’s like MSHTML, where you can navigate web pages through code and interact with elements on the page as objects, and have those objects available through COM?
Edited 2009-03-05 01:43 UTC
Its sort of funny. The first time I read Atlas Shrugged I was about 16, and it really pissed me off. I felt she had a point, but was building up straw men to proove it, and those sorts of extremes just didn’t exist.
Fast forward a decade or so, and the attitudes and opinions coming out of the EU commission and the FSF are almost exactly the things Ayn Rand was talking about back then. It made me do a double take, because I still consider myself a moderate liberal, but here I am agreeing with some of the things Ayn Rand was talking about!
Especially in this case, I can’t help but like results of the governament intervention. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth though, because it is the result of companies not wanting to compete based on merit, but out of some sort of belief that they are entitled to a piece of the pie they didn’t earn.
There is a great video on youtube of steve jobs from the 70s or 80s saying “I don’t begrudge that Microsoft is where it is, because they earned it. What I don’t like is that a company is in their position that has such poor taste in everything it does” (to paraphrase)
The sad truth is that the nicest, prettiest, smartest product doesn’t always win. We can say “man, that sucks”, but that does not mean that they are entitled to something they didn’t achieve.
removed…
Edited 2009-03-05 05:34 UTC
The problem isnt that Microsoft added IE to Windows. The problem is that they tied the damn thing into the OS so tightly that you have absolutely no other choice but to use it. All system updates used to require IE. Then once IE had a high market share, Microsoft started pushing its IE only web standards on the internet. Thats why they got hammered. Not because they included a browser, but because they tried to use it to control the way we use the web. Had Mozilla not come along, they might very well have been able to push ASP into most web sites instead of flash. Who wants an Internet entirely built around Microsoft?
Has the problem of Messenger *always* opening links in IE (despite a different browser being set default) been fixed in the latest WLM? I wouldn’t think of installing it to find out.
This alone has probably helped ‘accidentally’ push millions of people off of their alternative browser and back on to IE unwittingly—it certainly plagues me when I’m trying to get users to stick to an alternative browser for their own good!
Back in the last browser war both sides were trying to get a competitive advantage by providing interesting features. MS won it, and then stopped updating their browser in any significant way for almost a decade. This browser war is all about standards, and we are seeing MS take consistent strides in that direction. IE8 is about as standards compliant as FF2 was, which is a huge difference from IE6.
Also, ASP and flash are completely and totally different things. ASP outputs ugly, but standards compliant html. Flash is a scritable animation framework.
Any answers to separate KHTML without breaking KDE?
and hey windows is microsoft’s operating system. They are FREE to integrate IE or any other thing with OS. If you dont like it don’t buy it. that is real meaning of freedom.
Linux even don’t have CLEAN uninstall program for any software. And fanboys talk about uninstaling IE?
Edited 2009-03-05 14:17 UTC
Well, now a major tool that keeps a OS from being useless has been legislated out.
Will Windows 7 be allowed to ship with a media player, text editor, file manager, and/or UI?
It’s not out but now it can be replaced. Whether Microsoft will actually let OEMs replace IE with Firefox or Chrome remains to be seen.
As for the rest of it, I thought the media player already was removeable. I don’t think anyone’s concerned about the text editor because that market’s quite lively. As for UI, as anyone who’s tried a Windows shell replacement will know, it’s do-able but it could be easier.
Almafeta pondered…
It’s an interesting question, one that we will definitely see answered if Windows Seven’s Wordpad is still able to open and edit *.docx files like it currently does in the beta.
–bornagainpenguin