Tutorial

Internet Explorer is actually a very lightweight .EXE "shell" program that embeds the IE webbrowser ActiveX control (IEX). IEX contains the actual engine that renders and displays the HTML in its window. Many Windows programmers don't know that they can embed webbrowser ActiveX controls inside their VB, C#, Delphi, C++ (or other) applications. We call an application that embeds IEX a "hybrid app". Its just a traditional Windows application with one or more embedded webbrowser controls that display HTML. The screenshot below shows such an app. This a regular VB Form with a web browser control (WOW) embedded. The top light-green band along the top is a VB Form that contains standard Windows controls (combobox and buttons). The white part below that is the webbrowser control. The page displayed was dynamically generated using HSP and data from a database using ADO in the ASP code.  (Please also see this page for more about embedding the WOW control and using HSP.)

Conclusion

As you can see, embedding the web browser control in your Windows applications adds a powerful new dimension to Windows programs, with its powerful rendering capabilities. HSP provides the missing piece needed to display dynamic webpages. You can also using the printing capabilities of the browser control to have instant, high quality printer output (HSP + IE makes a great report writer).  Please also see this page for more about embedding the WOW control and using HSP.