BHO support in Windows 8

What’s new in Windows 8

Windows 8 offers two modes of work: Metro and Desktop. Desktop is the mode we are used to, most apps that work on Windows 7, will work fine on Desktop mode including LSP. Metro is the new mode that uses sandbox for each app, Metro app can’t use normal Win API, it has to use WinRT which is a special Metro API.

How this affects BHO?

In IE10 toolbars and components are not supported, only html5 is supported, also Firefox and Chrome are developing their own Metro version, what will be their take on addons? it’s unknown at the moment, but there’s a trend to remove toolbars because it is heavily spammed in the past few years by applications to make money out of searches.

What’s next?

Any application that wants to intercept Metro based apps must use WFP, since all other method will not work with Metro (TDI/DLL Injection/LSP/BHO)

Does Komodia has a solution?

Yes, we have a WFP component and adjusted it to work with Windows 8 new interception requirements, you can visit the product’s page: Komodia’s Redirector.

Is BHO dead?

BHO is not dead yet, in June 2012 around 42% of OS are Windows XP which can’t use WFP, so any company that still wants to support XP can use BHO, Windows 7 has 40% market share that supports browsers that supports BHO as well.

The advantage of Komodia’s solution that it supports the same API for WFP and LSP, so you don’t need to worry about the OS differences, Komodia’s solution doesn’t use BHO.