Microsoft Edge has recently published out its new, Chromium-based implementation. That displaces the old Trident engine.
When I first joined Microsoft many years ago, I was working on what was then known as Avalon, which eventually became WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Many of the team members on Avalon had worked on Trident before. You could definitely see the strong influence.
I remember how much things like TextPointer resembled IMarkupPointer2 in the early days; they eventually diverged as the use cases and scope were refined.
Trident started out as the rendering and model/interaction tech for the web browser, but once if became a standalone control (around IE4 if I remember correctly), it started showing up in many places. Certainly things like web editing tools, but also things like form designers. So long, IHTMLEditServices, and your family of related APIs to manage IHTMLEditDesigner.
There was always a distinction in many ways between the control and the host, but sometimes things leaked through. The Internet Explorer application and related interfaces was were you were supposed to add things like custom toolbars (where Windows Search and Google Search lived once), and event things that leaked further out like desk bands.
Here is a list of odd things built with Trident.
So long, and thanks for all the good memories!
Tags: history