Non-browser Shells
Other applications that are not primarily for web browsing, such as Intuit's Quicken and QuickBooks, AOL, Winamp, and RealPlayer, use the rendering engine to provide a limited-functionality "mini" browser within their own user interfaces.
On Windows, components of Internet Explorer are also used in Windows Explorer, the operating system shell that provides the default file system browsing and desktop services. For example, folder views in Windows Explorer on versions of Windows prior to Windows XP utilize IE's DHTML processing abilities; they are essentially little web pages. Active Desktop technology is another example.
The Trident engine was, until Outlook 2007, also used to render HTML portions of email messages in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express email clients (Outlook 2007 now uses Microsoft Word to render HTML e-mail). This integration, while convenient, is an often-exploited "back door," since the Internet Explorer components make available more functionality to the HTML code than some feel should be permitted in the context of email messages, and Outlook and Outlook Express have, historically, not done enough to prevent malicious code from taking advantage of that functionality. The latest updates for Outlook Express, which require Windows XP and are distributed with Service Pack 2, are intended to improve this situation. Outlook 2003 already includes many of the updates.
While all of these programs can customize Internet Explorer's user interface and extend the feature set, they cannot modify the rendering engine, and are therefore subject to many of the same benefits and vulnerabilities of IE, including security holes and issues with rendering.
HTA is a method developed by Microsoft to open up HTML files in a window free of navigation and other interface elements.
Read more about this topic: Internet Explorer Shell
Famous quotes containing the word shells:
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)