How do you define a browser? If you strip away the visual chrome, a browser is simply a piece of software that interprets a certain set of languages and displa

How do you define a browser? If you strip away the visual chrome, a browser is simply a piece of software that interprets a certain set of languages and displays the result, not unlike the JVM or the CLR. As for your example, I can do that now - when I type gmail.com into the Vista Run dialog, my browser opens up and runs the Gmail app. How is this different from typing in the name of a JAR file and having it run, aside from a different program being run to interpret the code? Also, what about the tight IE-Explorer integration in XP, where I could open a normal Explorer window, type in gmail.com in the location bar, and then Gmail would open in that window (and have the UI change to IE's chrome)?