Creating web browsers

Question

From what I know, browsers that are based on WebKit have been built around the open source webkit project after they downloaded it and built it, so if one were to build a browser around the Trident rendering engine/Internet Explorer's rendering engine, would you-

1. Download Trident from somewhere, build it and add it to your project, or;
2. Add a System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser Control to your Form and use that?

Answer 1

I believe that the System.Windows.Forms.WebBrowser control is indeed based on IE's Trident engine. however it is highly limited in what it can and can't do, by default.

You can however modify application specific settings for your browser to enable features through the control.

An example of this is that the WebBrowser control, by default, renders using the lowest setting supported by the version of IE installed on the machine, so for example if you have IE9 installed, the WebBrowser control will render in IE7 compatibility mode, but you can make it render using IE9 standards based mode if you change/add some settings to the registry.

Take a look at implementing/modifying Internet Feature Controls here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330720%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

On another note, I think you'd be hard pushed to find a download for Trident. Being a Microsoft product, my guess is that it's a closely guarded, closed source, secret! - However of you do find a download for it, I'd be very interested to know more! :-)