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Microsoft Says Google Chrome Frame Makes IE Less Secure
Mark writes "The release of Google Chrome Frame, a new open source plugin that injects Chrome's renderer and JavaScript engine into Microsoft's browser, earlier this week had many web developers happily dancing long through the night. Finally, someone had found a way to get Internet Explorer users up to speed on the Web. Microsoft, on the other hand, is warning IE users that it does not recommend installing the plugin. What does the company have against the plugin? It makes Internet Explorer less secure. 'With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers,' a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. 'Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attack area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.'"
It's a great argument against Silverlight from a consumer's point of view. You have to load extra software which won't effect 99.9% of the pages you might visit.You aren't really adding any security, since the old crap is still there.
From a web developers point of view this could be HUGE. Most customers wouldn't have a problem installing a Google-based plugin, and after we get them to install the plugin WE NEVER NEED TO CODE FOR IE AGAIN!!!!! Really, IE8 isn't a terrible browser, but IE7 and IE6 are unforgivably bad. This takes care of all the IE6, IE7, and IE8 incompatible crap and lets you override their engines by adding one tag to your page.
I still don't understand how IE could be made less secure. Surely, IE offers more options than just Javascript to install malware.
Because on Vista, IE8 runs sandboxed.
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Microsoft has told skydivers that they don't recommend using parachutes, because a parachute adds to their weight.
This (as the advice stated by microsoft) is based on strictly true facts (greater attack area) but it is also strictly useless advice...
Or Chrome, or Safari, or even Firefox 2 on Windows
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not this stupid argument again
you are comparing apples and oranges, known bugs in an open codebase, which gets patched relatively quickly.
and known bugs in a closed codebase which gets patched not so quickly. I am sure if we could see the code we could find some more bugs, but alas... we shall never know.
and since we can not know you can not really compare the numbers in a meaningful way.
also, when they do those bug counts on linux they tend to add in bugs from other packages, so are the adding in bugs on popular plugins or anything as well? unfortunately those numbers are hard to trust, because the people who gather them have shown themselves to be untrustworthy in the past.
that said IE8 is better than earlier versions, I still don't like it and not because its microsoft, but because the interface stinks and it has had some rendering issues with sites I use, I prefer safari on osx and ff when I have to use windows.
If you like IE, more power to you, I would love to see windows users switch from ie6 to ie8, makes my life easier.
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Classic Microsoft tactic. Every single release of everything they ever do is prefaced with a couple of months of how the last release was shit and they're really sorry for letting everyone down, but hey, this time they're going to get it right, promise.
The incredible thing is that, like a battered housewife, people keep taking them back.
Flash is just generally terrible. Macromedia decided to make a development system for people who at most perhaps understood some Javascript, so their model is based on weird concepts like frames and putting scripts in objects (objects as in images). Writing a complex application in flash would be an exercise in futility, especially compared Java. As terrible as Java is, a skilled developer can write a significantly better, cleaner, and more technically capable (hardware acceleration etc) in it in less time and have a smaller package. Still, I don't think Java is the answer, but at least it's "better" than flash.