I haven’t used Internet Explorer for many years. I keep it around for those extremely rare occasions when Firefox or Chrome just will not do it for me. It has been so long since that happened that I don’t remember when it was. I DO remember that it buggered some settings and stuff and left a load of residual mess on my system.
So, why does the download button automatically load IE? Why doesn’t it just use the browser that is in operation?
???
SketchUp uses IE on Windows and Safari on Mac because those browsers are included with the OS. There’s no guarantee that every user will have Chrome or Firefox installed.
I discovered that I could use this URL (Download All | SketchUp) in Firefox and download the upgrade. I was just curious why SU didn’t leave the choice of browser to the user and just point to the webpage.
It’s the web-based dialogs like the EW and Get Location that use it.
Program developers use/rely on tools provided by OS developers. It’s a constant and helps to keep down program size. IE is one of those tools, and several things are bundled with it - ie, webdialogs, internet access, and javascript.
Sketchup’s reliance on IE as the sole browser does not make any sense. Despite what has been said above every PC or Mac has a default browser. It is not asking too much that Sketchup accesses the default browser -whatever it happens to be - instead of going straight to IE. My default browser is Firefox. I have not used IE for years. It could be over a decade since I used IE. I never launch it. It is not configured. And yet: every time I launch Sketchup, a second window appears, demanding that I configure IE 11.
I have tried many times to find a way to prevent this second window launching but I have found nothing.
Please advise how I can stop this totally pointless and annoying behaviour by Sketchup.
Using the browser of the users choice internally in SU would be a pointless behavior. Then developers would need to test their web dialogs in every browser you can think of instead of just the two system browsers of the systems that supports SU. I have never heard of an embedded environment where the user can switch the browser.
However SketchUp is relying less and less on IE and Safari. In version 2017 a chromium browser was added to SU for the dialogs to ensure they behave consistently on all OSs. There wasn’t enough time to switch all native dialogs over to the new browser engine but I think that is the intention.