We've noticed some memory leaks and stability issues when using the ActiveX module for IE support, and it seems like there is no good way to address the issue other than opening an actual instance of the browser.

Can we get a web browser component native to Ignition? I know Webkit isn't the most friendly package in the Java world right now, but anything would be better than embedding IE...

There is certainly both demand and interest for a native web browser in Ignition. As I recall, the issue has been of finding a viable free library or appropriately licensed options. Here is some past discussion of the topic:

viewtopic.php?f=71&t=6056&p=16525
viewtopic.php?f=71&t=5315

After poking through those threads, JXBrowser looks to be worth investigating. You can try it online here.

jbrowse uses the mozilla api and appears to be open source. how would one go about implementing the embedded
browser? right now my company has a large already existing internal web. i have used the active x way too much and I believe my project has suffered from it. In many cases I have asked the it guys for access to their db tables where data
entry already occurs. The whole process has been a struggle to try to collaborate.

Either we're looking at different JBrowse projects or it doesn't do what you think it does.

http://code.google.com/p/jbrowser/

have a look at it, it sounds similar to the others...
I could be misunderstanding what it does also...

I looked up just jbrowse like I typed it, lol not the genome project

Yeah, different projects. Not sure if we've looked at that one before, but after a quick look I can see that it requires native libraries, which probably ruled it out if we did see it. I'll ask around tomorrow and see.

Is Apache 2 licensed software good to be distributed with Ignition?

I'm assuming it would be based on your usage of Tomcat...

Ah ha! Good point.

jbrowser works, is this something that requires module development to add to ignition?

http://www.webrenderer.com/?wrnews

So Is there any hope for this? If one was to purchase this as 3rd party how would it integrate with ignition? Would it be a module that gets installed? The 'better browser' is a worthy investment.

It seems that the best option would be to create a module that you could install into Ignition. I don't think it would be too much work to create a client/designer module that implemented a new browser by creating a new vision component.
In the case of WebRender you would need to load the correct library depending on the platform as it appears to have native code dependencies.

Jul 30, 2012 7:56:51 PM ru.atomation.jbrowser.impl.JBrowserManager initialize
INFO: Using xul runner dir: C:\Users\t\workspace\jbrowser_for_ignition\jbrowser\xulrunner\xulrunner
Jul 30, 2012 7:56:51 PM ru.atomation.jbrowser.impl.JBrowserManager initialize
SEVERE: failed to initialize mozilla
org.mozilla.browser.MozillaException: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: C:\Users\t\workspace\jbrowser_for_ignition\jbrowser\xulrunner\xulrunner\javaxpcomglue.dll: Can't load IA 32-bit .dll on a AMD 64-bit platform
at org.mozilla.browser.MozillaExecutor.mozInit(MozillaExecutor.java:675)
at ru.atomation.jbrowser.impl.JBrowserManager.initialize(JBrowserManager.java:147)
at ru.atomation.jbrowser.impl.JBrowserManager.<init>(JBrowserManager.java:67)
at ru.atomation.jbrowser.impl.JBrowserBuilder.buildBrowserManager(JBrowserBuilder.java:127)
at ru.atomation.jbrowser.snippets.GettingStartedSnippet.main(GettingStartedSnippet.java:25)
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: C:\Users\t\workspace\jbrowser_for_ignition\jbrowser\xulrunner\xulrunner\javaxpcomglue.dll: Can't load IA 32-bit .dll on a AMD 64-bit platform
at java.lang.ClassLoader$NativeLibrary.load(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary0(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Runtime.load0(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.System.load(Unknown Source)
at org.mozilla.xpcom.internal.JavaXPCOMMethods.registerJavaXPCOMMethods(JavaXPCOMMethods.java:57)
at org.mozilla.xpcom.internal.MozillaImpl.initialize(MozillaImpl.java:48)
at org.mozilla.xpcom.Mozilla.initialize(Mozilla.java:668)
at ru.atomation.jbrowser.impl.JBrowserManager$2.run(JBrowserManager.java:162)
at org.mozilla.browser.MozillaExecutor$4.run(MozillaExecutor.java:646)

Well I was taking a stab at implementing jbrowse and here is one fatal reason concerning the dependency topic , that it appears this free option wont work.
I sure would like to see this feature but appears I need to move on..
I started trying to build it in eclipse on a 64bit OS. It might run on 32 bit machine....

The native libraries mentioned above..Would this be the xulrunner?