Windows definitely shipped a universal WebView long before anyone else would. For a long time software like Steam would still shove an embedded IE component into dialog boxes and windows to show formatted and/or dynamic content. Being able to rely on having access to a consistent HTML renderer with scripting was huge for frontend software dev.
These days people just ship 50+mb worth of chromium goo with every application instead, but Windows definitely lead the way there and did so very early.
These days people just ship 50+mb worth of chromium goo with every application instead, but Windows definitely lead the way there and did so very early.