About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Questions and information about creating Internet aware NeoBook applications. Including PHP, HTML, FTP, HTTP, Email, etc.

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About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by fkapnist »

I am trying to build a web browser with Neobook.... I have already made a web browser using Javascipt (http://os.verticalbrowser.com/) .. javascript uses iframes to display web pages but that is not so reliable (it crashes and breaks out of frames)...
I thought Neobook is powerful enough to build a decent web browser but I have read some comments on this forum about the Microsoft Trident7 rendering engine that Neobook uses. Many people say IE7 is "over 20 years old" and not appropriate anymore for CSS and HTML5....
However I am now using the IE11default browser and when I checked to see what's inside I got this: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
As you can see, IE11 still uses the same Trident7 / MSIE 7 rendering object.... So then something else must be to blame for the problems reported here. I wonder if there is a plugin or Registry patch that will help? What gets me is that when I browse to some of the top ranking sites I often get this message: "You are viewing this site in an outdated browser! To view this site as it was intended, please consider upgrading to a modern browser. In your current browser, some pages may not function or display correctly." So something has to be worked out (Microsoft should try and show some concern after having lost market shares to Apple)... If new websites are going to block our Neobook apps before we can even compile them, because it reports an IE7 browser, I don't see much of a future in Neobook applications. Nope. Because the browser is the killer app. This is 2014 of the "'Cloud," not the floppy disk land of the 1990s.... I need to display HTML5 without errors, and to report the NB browser as IE11, so new websites won't continue to treat it as an "outdated browser." I wonder if there are Chrome or Mozilla pluigns or a Registry patch that will help in this matter? Any suggestions are welcome.. I am sure there are solutions. The Real Player for example is built on the same IE7 object, so why not Neobook?
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by Neosoft Support »

The IE 7 compatibility mode is something Microsoft imposes on apps that make use of Internet Explorer. We have looked into using alternate browsers like Chrome, FireFox, etc. but doing so would add approximately 30MB to each compiled NeoBook app (regardless of whether Chrome or FF are installed). However, there is a way to get NeoBook to use whatever version of IE is currently installed on your PC...

All you need to do is turn off NeoBook's "IE7 Compatibility Mode" option which can be found in the Web Browser object's properties screen under "Display Options". Simply remove the checkmark from the "IE7 Compatibility mode" option and run your pub.

Further explaination:

NeoBook's Web Browser object is based on the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) browser component included with Windows. By default, Microsoft's browser component renders content as if it were displayed in version 7 of Internet Explorer (IE7). Newer versions of IE can display some types of HTML, CSS and web content differently. Uncheck the IE7 Compatibility Mode option if you want the Browser to use the actual installed version if Internet Explorer instead. (Note: This option requires NeoBook to create an entry in the Windows registry when your program runs. The registry entry is removed when your program closes. An article from Microsoft describing this issue can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 30(v=vs.85).aspx#browser_emulation.)
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by dpayer »

fkapnist wrote: I thought Neobook is powerful enough to build a decent web browser but I have read some comments on this forum about the Microsoft Trident7 rendering engine that Neobook uses. Many people say IE7 is "over 20 years old" and not appropriate anymore for CSS and HTML5....
Internet Explorer 7 was released on 18 October 2006.

You are obviously not aware of Internet Explorer version 1.0 that came out in 1995 (less than 20 years ago). With that version, if you wanted to update the browser with windows updates, you couldn't. You had to download Netscape in order to download version 2 of IE to install it. Microsoft's website did not work with IE v1 and at that point they were running their websites on Unix.

Don't even talk about JS/CSS or HTML 2 (November 24, 1995 HTML 2.0 was published.)

20 years ago people were looking at html pages in EGA monitors! (no I didn't misspell VGA - EGA was it's predecessor, an improvement over CGA)

Nuff said. :)
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by fkapnist »

Well I did turn off the IE7 Compatibility mode.... However i also read on this forum that a Registry fix can make a Neobook app emulate IE8, so I tried it.... Unfortunately even IE8 is considered too old by some sites that use Css, FLV and HTML.... So I got all those "your browser is outdated" messages. I now removed the data from my Registry . I'll see if there is a difference I hope..

[(HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
"Your program's name.exe" = dword 8888 (Hex: 0x22B8)
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by fkapnist »

Microsoft no longer uses the "compatibility mode" option in its new IE11 browser.... good riddance... it never really worked very well anyway... but it offered a corporate excuse: Explorer doesn't work? it's your fault! keep trying.... lol As it turns out, some of the "your browser is outdated" messages are really tricks to make you download malware : http://www.enigmasoftware.com/warningyo ... d-removal/

Right now Chrome is the most widely used browser. But I found that it can disable JScript in iframes. Not good. Third party "advertisers" perhaps can take control of the Chrome browser through an iframe. IE doesn't experience this vulnerability. The newest versions of Firefox do, since they are using more of the Chrome architecture. Opera will soon too. I don't know if Chrome's disabling of JScript in iframes (without user consent or knowledge) is a security feature or a flaw.
Google has been spearheading a campaign for years now, convinced webmasters and site developers to avoid the use of iframes like the plague because they supposedly "pose risks." Hold your breath, don't laugh... all those years Google has been making billions of dollars by the exclusive use of iframes. YouTube, Ad Sense, to name a few, all serve millions of iframes every day. pose risks? hmm... you can't monopolize something that you can't patent, like the humble iframe, so they demonized it while using double stands for themselves. Anyway, my present obstacle with Neobook now is not being able to view Flash video FLV on some sites like the BBC.... is some codex required?
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by dec »

Hello,
fkapnist wrote:Well I did turn off the IE7 Compatibility mode.... However i also read on this forum that a Registry fix can make a Neobook app emulate IE8, so I tried it.... Unfortunately even IE8 is considered too old by some sites that use Css, FLV and HTML.... So I got all those "your browser is outdated" messages. I now removed the data from my Registry . I'll see if there is a difference I hope..

[(HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
"Your program's name.exe" = dword 8888 (Hex: 0x22B8)
Are you tried with other value than "8888"? Take a look here.
Last edited by dec on Thu Nov 20, 2014 2:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by Neosoft Support »

Are you tried with other valuen than "8888"?
Yes, try "11000" for IE 11.

Turning off NeoBook's IE7 Compatibility mode option should do this for you unless something prevents it from writing to the registry. This compatibility mode is different than the one you see in Explorer's settings. Nevertheless, it's definitely a dumb feature.
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by fkapnist »

The Newsweek website shows some garbled text when displayed directly in the NeoBook WebBrowser. However, if I put it in a web page iframe and then display it again with the Neobook WebBrowser, it appears correctly showing the Newsweek ad banner. How come? The web page with the iframe has this header meta tag: "meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8". If that is what causes the difference in display, how do I put "UTF-8 charset" in the Neobook WebBrowser? I would appreciate some advice. thanks.


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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by Neosoft Support »

I really have no idea what to suggest. With the IE7 compatibility mode option turned off, NeoBook displays the Newsweek website exactly the same as Internet Explorer does - which isn't 100% perfect. According to Internet Explorer, the Newsweek website contains some errors in their JavaScript, but who knows if that's really true. It could be IE's fault or it could be that Newsweek's website isn't as cross browser compatible as it should be.
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by fkapnist »

Neosoft Support wrote:I really have no idea what to suggest. With the IE7 compatibility mode option turned off, NeoBook displays the Newsweek website exactly the same as Internet Explorer does - which isn't 100% perfect. According to Internet Explorer, the Newsweek website contains some errors in their JavaScript, but who knows if that's really true. It could be IE's fault or it could be that Newsweek's website isn't as cross browser compatible as it should be.
I think it might have something to do with the Encoding option (when you right click on a page). It is preset at auto-select, but best results for all foreign languages are with UTF-8.
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by Neosoft Support »

Shouldn't the desired encoding be present in the site's HTML header?
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Re: About the Neobook "IE7 Browser" Object

Post by fkapnist »

A solution for better rendering can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=20784

:?
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