Re: [Amis-devl] [Amis-users] Internet explorer 7.

[Daniel W. <dan...@gm...>]

Hi !
I have no experience with Mozilla's ActiveX browser control, but here  
are my thoughts anyway.

The source code is hosted at Mozilla's:

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/embedding/browser/activex/src/ 
control/

...and as you can see there's not much activity lately.

Adam Lock is the person who maintains the ActiveX control:

http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm

If we were braver (and had more time on our hands), we could try the  
XPCOM embedded browser control:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpcom/book/cxc/html/index.html

...but the ActiveX component integration is way easier and would  
permit to easily switch between IE and Gecko.

Daniel/


On 19 Feb 2007, at 14:48, Marisa DeMeglio wrote:
> on 2/18/2007 5:21 PM Moira Clunie wrote:
>>
>> What would your requirements be for an alternative text renderer?  
>> Have
>> you looked at Mozilla Firefox lately? It's free and Open Source,
>> supports the CSS standard more thoroughly than IE (i.e. more  
>> options for
>> visual display of text) and has better support for XML (i.e. would  
>> work
>> more easily for DAISY 3). It's also cross-platform which would  
>> make it
>> easier to make Mac or Linux versions of AMIS.
>
> Firefox (or, more generally, the Gecko engine) meets all of the
> requirements except one: it looks like a lot of work to embed in a
> windows application.  This is the only area where IE has the advantage
> (you literally just drop it in).  At one time someone was working  
> on an
> Active X control for Gecko, but there isn't much activity lately,  
> as far
> as I can tell.  On Linux, Gecko will be as easy to embed as IE in
> windows, since it's built into one (or more?) toolkits.
>
>
>> I don't think it has
>> built-in SMIL support yet though, and it might not work quite so well
>> with major screen readers - e.g. JAWS only officially supports  
>> Firefox
>> from version 7.0.
>
> We do our own SMIL support, so that's no problem :)  As for
> screenreaders, we have a developer who has done JFW scripts for AMIS
> which I believe override some of the web browser controls, so it could
> be that people aren't even using the embedded web browser like they
> would use a regular browser.
>
>> Another downside is that it's not installed by default
>> on most people's computers - but since it's Open Source, perhaps the
>> relevant bits could be bundled into the AMIS installation?
>
> I think we can work around this, you're right, we could just  
> include the
> right files with our own installer.
>
> Thanks for bringing this up, it is periodically on my mind.  There  
> would
> be a lot of advantages to using Mozilla once the initial challenges  
> were
> out of the way.
>
> Marisa