For those looking for an alternative to the MS web browser control to use inside windows applications there is hope in the form of an embedded control that is using the mozilla brower engine. Check it out, it actually implements exactly the same interfaces as the MS web browser control and thus u can literally just replace the activex control in ur apps with the mozilla one without changing any other source code.
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/control.htm
Just one point to remeber is that ur connection settings like proxy etc must be specified in a 'prefs.js' file located in the 'C:\Program Files\Mozilla ActiveX Control v1.7.1\defaults\pref' directory. The file u can just plain copy from ur Firefox directory as is.
Now I'm considdering using this in the Dark throne browser... Only problem is one of distribution as it obviously is not automatically available on most pc's while the IE engine is there by default *cough*