"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| I suppose it _could_ use IE - I've heard that Explorer itself does.

They're interconnected, or at least they were. I wrote
my own Explorer Bar and had to make extra effort to stop
it loading in IE. And it works in Win7. But it's 32-bit so I
can't use it in Win10.

The coupling dates back to Active Desktop in 98+. The strategy
to beat Netscape by embedding IE so deeply that no
court could make them remove it. The desktop was a browser
window. Folders were browser windows. Literally,
IE browser windows. It was so much fun to work with. But
then security happened. Nevertheless, both Explorer and IE
stayed linked at least through Win7. I assume much of it
exists in Win10 for backward compatibility.

All of that was marketed as Bill Gates brilliantly forseeing
the role of the Internet, but it really had nothing to do with
the Internet. It was about killing Netscape and finding a way
to sell ad space on Windows. The first worked out well, the
latter, not so much.