News - Microsoft proposes u-turn on Windows 7 E editions, awaits EU approval

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Internet Explorer could make a return to European editions of Windows 7.

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Read more.

Would be hilarious if Opera wasn't included on this ballot screen :D

There's still the question of who maintain's the ballot screen/browser list

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Originally Posted by Arthran

There's still the question of who maintain's the ballot screen/browser list

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Easy - anyone. So long as Eu commission signs off. If you cover the top 5 that would be seen by any court as a 'reasonable' effort to promote competition. If you really must have some obscure browser, then you are probably in a very small market that can download it in the same way that you did before.

I assume this means you won't be able to uninstall IE then. Why can't they just play fair?

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Originally Posted by jimbouk

I assume this means you won't be able to uninstall IE then. Why can't they just play fair?

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You will still be able to remove the icon, change all the file asociations.

Who on earth would dev against a platform that didn't provide them with web centric API?

An example of this is the Internet Explorer 'zones'.
Here you define the local intranet, internet, trusted and untrusted.
All off these effect the permission of running applications from there. For instance most corperate networks have to set for .Net to be allowed to run from a network share. Often they do this by full trusting any code from the intranet zone, and then defining their main server as been part of the intranet.

How you draw the line at what is a web browser, and what is a key application programmers interface is hard.

Another good example is hosting the IE browser object, steam for instance does this, as do many of my applications when i want a rich error screen, and wanted to be able to change the content, simply pointing a browser window, which has no toolbar/backbuttons etc, embedded in my application provides a 1 minuite solution to a complicated issue (ok with WPF, you can do it much neater)........

So, no they won't let you uninstall it completely, with damn good reason!

At last! they've finally cottoned on to this idea, which is frankly the only solution that has ever been plausible in my opinion. I can't believe they didn't do this in the first place to be honest - it's so glaringly obvious to everyone else...

I suppose there is the slight question of what gets included on the list, but how hard can that really be to solve?

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Originally Posted by jimbouk

I assume this means you won't be able to uninstall IE then. Why can't they just play fair?

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Personally i think they have been more than fair.

Eu complains that they are bundling their own browser, so they stop bundling the browser.
Eu complains thats not what it really meant, So Microsoft offer to give an option for you to install other browsers, but give you their own as well if you want to use it.

I think they have been more than fair, i'm also 90% sure IE will be removable.

Now as a support tech, i'll be one of the first to bash Microsoft, but in these cases i feel the blame is entirely with the way the EU has handled the situation. They didn't give clear guidelines for what they wanted, they just whined. So when Microsoft have a new OS they want to launch, they chose what they thought would be the best and simplest option, only to have the Eu whine more. So they reacted with something else. You cant blame them for actually trying on this account.

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Originally Posted by jimbouk

I assume this means you won't be able to uninstall IE then. Why can't they just play fair?

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Pretty sure you can turn IE on and off in the Windows Components (in Control Panel).

Well it was like that for 7RC, not sure about 7RTM.