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Google Brings Chrome Renderer, Speedy Javascript To IE
A month after we discussed Google's bringing SVG to IE, several readers let us know that Google is expanding the beachhead by offering Chrome's renderer and speedy Javascript execution in an IE plugin. This effort is in service of allowing IE to participate in Google Wave when that technology's preview is extended in a week's time. The plugin, currently in an early stage of development, is called Google Chrome Frame.
I think I see Google starting a new tag... "letmefixthatforyou"
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
A lot of the fancy shit you see on the internet today is javascript, the reason much of it wasn't there before was because javascript was so damn intensive to execute. It's nothing like machine code, it's not even like repackaged interpreter language. Javascript is run straight from the script, and it is a terribly inefficient way to do things, but it is much easier to distribute along with HTML.
JS isn't exactly the future of all websites, but it's certainly easier to work with for light effects than flash.
I'll show you why you want JS to run better... go to ebay.com and press CTRL-F5 and count how long it takes to load. Then, disable Javascript execution and press CTRL-F5 again. I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
You don't really know what you're talking about here.
IE hasn't caught up to existing, published, finished standards- that's well before we even start talking about initial implementations of things from the in-progress HTML 5 standard. It's the worst browser in the bunch for CSS compatibility- with finished, published standards.
IE needs to play catch-up before it can even think about doing anything with HTML 5. They don't need an unstable browser fork; they just need to actually finish their standards implementations in the stable releases. They're getting better at it, definitely, but they've got a long way to go.
The ringing of the division bell has begun... -PF
Adblock+ and NoScript is win :)
I concur, but it's a depressing state that it should ever even be necessary to add to the work necessary to do less work in a realm where usability should be paramount.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft.
In Firefox, this page shows "W3C Working Draft" along the left side.
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
A lot of the features that Acid3 tests aren't new proposals in any sense; they've been around for years. WebKit (basis for Chrome and Safari), Gecko (Firefox and SeaMonkey), and Presto (Opera) all score above 90/100, which handily beats IE 8's 20/100.
Prediction: when YouTube dumps Flash, the new 'YouTube installer' is this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Is there an ongoing "my Javascript is faster than yours ha-ha" competition in the browser market?
Uhm... Yes?
Javascript is the one client-side programming language that is always guaranteed to be there, on anything that can reasonably be called a browser. Anything that can be called a web application is probably at some point going to care about Javascript speed. And faster Javascript opens the door to some things you might not have thought were possible in a browser.
When looking for a browser, it isn't just speed people are looking for; They want security
Chrome runs each tab in a separate process, meaning it can theoretically sandbox each tab using standard OS techniques -- for example, on Linux, my Chromium does seem to be running things as an unprivileged user, and chrooting them out of the way.
Other browsers are playing catch-up.
add-ons, customization
The Chrome extension API isn't finished, but it's just Javascript and HTML. It's the kind of thing that a web developer could learn in an hour. It won't run Firefox extensions (yet), but it seems likely that it'll have plenty of extensions Firefox won't, just because of how much easier it is to get off the ground.
If I want top speed, I'll use chrome. If I want an all-around great browser, I'll use Firefox.
We don't care, this isn't about you. (And for what it's worth, Firefox is working hard to improve javascript, security, and reliability to match Chrome.)
This is about the 80% who still use IE, and about the rest of us not having to care anymore. I can build a web app that works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Epiphany, Galeon, Konqueror, Opera, in every browser, ever, with minimal effort -- figure an extra 5-10% development time to make it work on browsers other than the one I develop for. IE will fuck it up and add easily 20-50% to my development time.
Doing it this way means that at some point in the future, hopefully, something like YouTube will force IE users to either switch browsers or install this plugin -- at which point, I can forget that IE exists, and let it all melt away like a bad dream.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft.
"The publication of this document by the W3C as a W3C Working Draft ...".
(And the first public working draft was published Jan 2008).
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
I don't work off these lists either, but I'm aware of a numer of high profile parts of it, say, the Canvas element. I'm sure Microsoft is too.
IE still has a very enterprise-oriented development cycle
Is this what we call their six year hiatus from actually working on their product?
In the late 1990s they showed they were quite capable of aggressively expanding IE's features, including new if raggedly incomplete support for emerging standards, when they decided it was in their interest to do it.
the bleeding edge feature explosion we see in most open source browsers.
A lot of the features discussed for HTML 5 have had visible implementations for 3-4 years. You could call them bleeding edge in 2006, maybe 2007. 2009? Not without looking pretty silly.
I don't think IE needs to catch up so much as Microsoft simply needs to release an unstable browser in addition to their platform browser if they want to compete with the rest of the non-standard "standards" cult.
The competing products seem to do just fine at keeping a comparable level of stability along with the pushing the envelope. In fact, given how much Opera, Mozilla, and Safari, have been able to do with resources that are orders of magnitude smaller, there's really no excuse.
Except of course if you're talking about CSS 2.1, where it is the best.
Can you defend this claim? Because based on my experiences *using* CSS over the last 7 years, there hasn't been a time when any version of IE could even claim they weren't maddeningly, brokenly worse.
Tweet, tweet.