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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.
...if Google is going to pull the embrace, extend and extinguish routine on Microsoft. I hope I live to see that day.
Google are taking the matter into their own hands and actually putting resources towards improving IE, because they know that MS will not do it in any reasonable way.
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?"
First they ignore you..
Then they laugh at you...
Then you make plugins for their browser.
and IE?
No, but funny you should mention it. The funny part is that Google is beating MS in their own game. They are actually improving the MS browser so that users can properly and smoothly use Google products, and when the user is tied in he will notice not only Google Wave, but also the Google Chrome banners or "suggestions", and later on Google Chrome OS. Instead of trying to act as the bigger predator as traditional software wars, they act as the symbiotic bacteria "infecting" the host. Today IE, tomorrow the world!
Seems to me that there is simply no room for anything else than genious inside Google, but perhaps I'm giving too much credit. Still -- well played Google, well played.
I am the lawn!
Google is the wind beneath my wings.
From Chrome Frame Developer's Guide:
Note: forcing websites into Google Chrome Frame with these techniques may lead to unexpected behavior. Google Chrome Frame will fetch URLs using the host browser's network stack, so the web site will send content intended for the host browser
So it looks they are only replacing the renderer and not the networking and other internal parts of IE, so it will behave remotely as a real IE, only that the content is displayed by the plugin. This is not a new idea, people tried to do it with Gecko, the advantage of WebKit is that the host (in this case IE) can provide a lot, instead Gecko is tightly tied to NetLib (The Mozilla Networking Library), NSPR (Netscape Portable Runtime), NSS (Network Security Services) so it was not practical as a plugin because it will be a complete browser inside IE
Actually, no.
Google Docs is based on two applications: Writely, by Upstartle, and XL2Web, by 2Web Technologies.
Google Earth was originally named Earth Viewer and it was created by Keyhole, inc.
Google Maps was created for the company Where 2 Technologies.
Code and Scholar search, in spite of being useful, are nothing more than variations of Google Search, so from that list only GMail was truly created at Google.
Dilbert RSS feed
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.
I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
Slashdot.
Perhaps not as intensive as ebay.com, but without javascript enabled, Slashdot loads faster and generally works better. You could say it's "less filling".
This whole thing should be very embarrassing for Microsoft... but apparently it isn't. Microsoft is co-sponsoring a conference about SVG, which is being held in Google's Mountain View complex, of all places. That in itself is disturbing enough, but to think that the one company that's prevented SVG from gaining traction on the web is now pretending to be interested in SVG (as opposed to promoting their Silverlight tool as the only *real* solution) is, excuse me, fucked up.
If they really want to help the advancement of SVG, they should finally release a browser which implements it natively. Apparently every other browser vendor can do it. For IE, at the moment, we have to rely on a fragile JavaScript/Flash workaround provided by Google.
I'm really not ranting about Microsoft just for the fun of it; I'm usually pragmatic, bordering on stoic. But I (like many others here) have spent weeks and months trying to work around Microsoft products' shortcomings, and this kind of hypocrisy is making me angry.
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
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.
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