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Mozilla Slams Chrome Frame As "Browser Soup"

Posted by kdawson on from the strange-bedfellows dept.

CWmike writes "Mozilla executives today took shots at Google for pitching its Chrome Frame plug-in as a solution to Internet Explorer's poor performance, with one arguing that Google's move will result in 'browser soup.' The Mozilla reaction puts the company that builds Firefox on the same side of the debate as rival Microsoft, which has also blasted Google over the plug-in. Mitchell Baker, the former CEO of Mozilla and currently the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, said in a blog post, 'The overall effects of Chrome Frame are undesirable. I predict positive results will not be enduring and — and to the extent it is adopted — Chrome Frame will end in growing fragmentation and loss of control for most of us, including Web developers.' Baker says Chrome Frame's browser-in-a-browser will confuse users and render some of their familiar tools useless. 'Once your browser has fragmented into multiple rendering engines, it's very hard to manage information across Web sites. Some information will be manageable from the browser you use and some information from Chrome Frame. This defeats one of the most important ways in which a browser can help people manage their [Web] experience.'"

58 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. IE by sopssa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Baker says Chrome Frame's browser-in-a-browser will confuse users and render some of their familiar tools useless. Some information will be manageable from the browser you use and some information from Chrome Frame.

    Interestingly, isn't this an exactly same issue with Firefox addons too? Some of them might create the same kind of incompabilities than Chrome Frame plugin does.

    On that note, in my opinion Chrome Frame itself serve's little to none purpose. If you can install it, you could install the actual Chrome (or some other) browser aswell. Websites need to opt-in for using the Chrome Frame for rendering with a metatag, and I think Google will be lucky if even 1% add that tag.

    Only good reason I've come across is the next note from the article

    Specifically, said Google, it was pushing Chrome Frame because it decided it wasn't worth trying to make its new collaboration and communications tool, Google Wave, work with IE. Google developers spent "countless hours" on tweaking Wave for IE, but gave up.

    Which does make sense. Users can use IE, but still get the Wave to work. But I except google to take more major approach about the plugin soon.

    1. Re:IE by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites (AdBlock Plus and NoScript may be desirable, but not necessary). As such, the people who install them are expected to be aware of potential incompatibility and can disable them if needed (for example, if AdBlock Plus blocks critical elements of a site, you can whitelist the necessary element, or just disable it on the specified site). The required knowledge level to install an addon usually means they know the basic troubleshooting needed to fix addon related problems.

      If Google decides that a large number of its services require Chrome Frame, people without the necessary knowledge will be installing it to use those services. And unlike the Firefox addon users, most of them won't be competent enough to troubleshoot any problems that arise from the combined renderer, or even understand the source of the problem.

      In addition, it would not surprise me to see a number of sites add the metatag without realizing the implications. Too many web developers are hacks, copying any pasting random junk from forums, reading tips out of guidebooks without understanding the context, etc. If their site's JavaScript is too slow, and a forum post says "Add this metatag to improve JavaScript performance," they'll add it without checking to see if their page is Chrome compatible.

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    2. Re:IE by at_slashdot · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No purpose? Many IE users won't change the browser but they would install all kind of crappy add ons. This add on doesn't even change the interface while most of the addons do.

      --
      "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
    3. Re:IE by RichardJenkins · · Score: 3, Funny

      That was a level 2 troll you fool! Take your hand from his mouth lest it comes for seconds.

    4. Re:IE by ReverendLoki · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites

      Asides from the sites that only render properly in IE due to poor authoring, there are still sites out there that will actively forbid you from viewing them unless you are using IE. Unfortunately, once in a blue moon I have to visit them. That's why I have the Firefox add-on IE Tab, which pretty much does the same thing as this Chrome Frame thing. Or am I somehow mistaken?

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    5. Re:IE by Gerald · · Score: 3, Interesting

      On that note, in my opinion Chrome Frame itself serve's little to none purpose. If you can install it, you could install the actual Chrome (or some other) browser aswell.

      There are quite a few companies locked in to IE 6 right now due to requirements from internal applications. I think Chrome Frame would be pretty attractive in this sort of environment. Instead of spending money and resources upgrading your apps you can deploy CF on your desktops and give your users a browser that runs as IE 6 internally and doesn't suck otherwise.

      It's also attractive to web developers. I added the CF meta tag to my site as soon as I heard about it. The fewer users using the IE 6 renderer the better.

    6. Re:IE by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're not mistaken. But it demonstrates the exact problems I mentioned. When viewing sites in IE Tab, you lose all the Firefox functionality below the level of tab separation. You need plugins for each, the behavior of different tabs doesn't match (I hate losing find-as-you-type for instance), etc.

      And like I noted before, the IE Tab users (usually) know what they are getting into; they have to explicitly opt in on each site. The Chrome Frame users won't be aware, as they would include a large percentage of the entire Google user base. And they don't control which sites use it; the web authors who do the blind copy'n'paste I mentioned will make the decision. It's annoying enough to lose functionality when I visit a site in IE Tab. It would be worse to experience it randomly as I browse.

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
    7. Re:IE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      its what used to be known around here as a "signal11 post". first post some incoherent babble that's remotely ontopic and you have a guaranteed five.

    8. Re:IE by IntlHarvester · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It might help to convince management to bring things up to date, too: you can get incremental benefits from incremental improvement, rather than having to commit to overhauling the entire universe in one go.

      I think this is an excellent point. GF will likely be deployed by enterprises as a way of migrating their intranet crap off IE6 (without having to incur the pain of hacking in IE6 support or training users to use multiple browsers).

      As an enduser technology, Frame is worse than useless. (Sites shouldn't be encouraging users to install plugins because most of them are malware.)

      --
      Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
    9. Re:IE by FictionPimp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Companies that are still using IE6 are probably not going to let their users install things like this. In fact, they are probably likely to ban it due to some misinformation.

    10. Re:IE by Scoth · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not to mention sloppy webmasters start depending on it rather than properly implementing their site. I remember one site trumpeting loudly "Now! Firefox support!! Click here for instructions!" and it was simply installing IETab and using it.

    11. Re:IE by inode_buddha · · Score: 2, Funny
      "I think this is an excellent point. GF will likely be deployed by enterprises..."

      Your GF will be deployed by enterprises???

      --
      C|N>K
    12. Re:IE by Ithaca_nz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites (AdBlock Plus and NoScript may be desirable, but not necessary).

      Er, Flash? I'd say websites that are Flash-based or contain fairly large amounts of Flash content are "common"...

    13. Re:IE by Canazza · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Situation last month: Standards Compliant browsers are in the minority. Horrible code hacks required to make things work on Internet Explorer
      Situation now: Standards Compliant browsers still in the minority, plugin availible to make things work on Internet Explorer. Microsoft upset
      Situation soon, if MS don't do anything: Standards Compliant browsers still in the minority, Google releases Wave and requests all IE users install their plugin, Internet Explorer becomes less stable as there are now TWO routes hackers can potentially take to hijack the browser.
      Situation soon, if MS does something: Internet Explorer is made standards complient so that users can take advantage of the tech users want to use, else MS looses browser market share. Standards Compliant browsers are now Ubiquitous.

      --
      It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
  2. They just wish they'd thought of it first. by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 5, Funny

    Google is simply "embracing and extending" IE's functionality, right?

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
    1. Re:They just wish they'd thought of it first. by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 2, Funny

      Google is simply "embracing and extending" IE's functionality, right?

      Hey, as long as they remember the "extinguish" step, I'll support the effort...

      --
      Do you have ESP?
  3. Important point by The+Ancients · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...Chrome Frame will end in growing fragmentation and loss of control for most of us, including Web developers.'

    A very important point. Those of us who build the web finally thought we were seeing some movement with the increasing adoption of Firefox (mainly) causing Microsoft to build better browsers in IE7, and more so, IE8. We really looked forward to moving from a development model where 50% of the time was spent building the site to standards, and 50% hacking for Internet Explorer.

    --
    The Mothership
    1. Re:Important point by sopssa · · Score: 5, Informative

      The usage of Chrome Frame is up to the webmaster - you define it in a metatag. Even more so it sends the Chrome useragent then, so you can apply your hacks like normal.

      This doesn't cost any more fragmention than before.

    2. Re:Important point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't that a good thing? I'm a web developer--and I'll say outright--I don't deserve control of your browser. The marketing tools that we had do our frontpage came up with a *beautiful* flash application--and the boss was absolutely heartbroken when he couldn't show our new page to somebody he met in the lobby of a motel. And most of what they did in flash would have rendered faster with a bit of CSS and tiny bit of javascript.

      I warned him---but pretty shiny things overcame technical sense. More fragmentation of the browser market is a *good* thing, as it will make further development of new shiny toys impossible (and economically unrewarding) until people actually FIX THE FUCKING STANDARDS. That's right--I said it--HTML is broken. Embedded video in a page is more about fucking politics than good technical sense--fuck you too apple and google for everything you had to do with that.

      Break the entire web, raze the platforms, make Microsoft impossible to develop for when their market share gets pushed down to 30%. Bring back the days of hacking different tables together, the CSS kluges in comment fields, javascript expressions detecting browsers, and the current abomination that is the ridiculous engine-creep in User-Agent strings.

      Make web developers like myself weep with frustration and push for real standards.

      But when it's all done, can we please get an open standard out of it (unlike Acid2), with a protected term (sort of like how CDROM is owned by sony) owned and registered by a governing body that certifies a browser engine as either implementing it or not?, and as part of the standard, have a "standards only" mode required--wherein no new tags may be rendered or acted upon?

      So finally, IE can't be called a "web browser" by definition if it doesn't pass "ACID VERSION 5.897879 Test 1083b".

      Then, and only then will the web actually be a reasonable platform to work on. Because as it is today--I look forward to fragmentation, since it would at least make all those lazy "web programmers" out there pay attention to the tags they're using.

    3. Re:Important point by Jarjarthejedi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How do you get from "This is a new thing and you have to do special stuff to get it to work for you" to "This doesn't cause anymore fragmentation than before"? Having new things you have to code for is the very definition of fragmentation, and adding a new type of browser that specifically requires extra code and could easily gain a significant usermarket is a step towards more fragmentation, not less.

      Just because you can code for it or leave it out doesn't mean it doesn't cause fragmentation. You can leave out IE8 code and just code for Mozilla to save fragmentation, but that's not a possibility for most web developers. As soon as Frame becomes popular it'll end up being yet another special case on the list of things you need to write extra code for, and that's a bad thing for a company that's supposed to be about embracing standards.

      --
      There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
    4. Re:Important point by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What he means is Frame doesn't activate unless the website asks for this (or, theoretically the user but I can't see that option being so popular if the site works anyway).

      So there's no extra work. If you don't want to support chrome then don't.. nothing has changed.

    5. Re:Important point by sopssa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As soon as Frame becomes popular it'll end up being yet another special case on the list of things you need to write extra code for, and that's a bad thing for a company that's supposed to be about embracing standards.

      Well you do not really need any other extra things for Frame other than the metatag - which you can happily avoid and have the IE users use IE's rendering engine if you want so. Frame's engine is basically same as Chrome's and you're definitely not avoiding that either.

      That being said I dont see a need to add the metatag to my sites. But if I did, I know it wouldn't really require more from me than that since I already have to support Chrome anyway. So it doesn't cause any fragmention.

    6. Re:Important point by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, thats just totally wrong. Instead of yet another spec to code for, now you can code to the standard, and expect most people to be able to view it correctly. Why code for IE6, IE7, IE8, and "all the rest of the world"? Code HTMl5 and CSS3, and let it just work the way its supposed to. This is, I think, what is actually scaring MS. Google's plugin makes it possible for the majority of the web to ignore MS specs and use standards, transparently. You know how developers are going to respond to this. Its like Christmas and Thanksgiving all at the same time.

    7. Re:Important point by BikeHelmet · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, it reduces fragmentation. Look at it this way:

      -You are a webmaster.
      -You have a website that works in IE.

      Result: No further action required. No fragmentation.

      -You are a webmaster.
      -You are coding a fancy DOM website, and need to implement ugly hacks to get it to work in IE.
      -It's too difficult. You site has too many great features, like a Canvas banner.
      -You either create a page educating users on the benefits of other browsers...
      -Or you check for Chrome Frame, and if it isn't there, give them a button to install it. It's just another plugin like flash, right? People will for sure click on that.

      Result: More fragmentation, but you save yourself effort, and are less likely to piss off IE lovers that refuse to use another browser.

      Seems like a win win to me!

    8. Re:Important point by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But as a web-dev, I can ignore Chrome-Frame [CF]... so right now I develop sites based on web-standards, and then I test and I typically add a bunch of IE conditional comments to deal with IE specific issues.

      So no changes there.

      The only reason I might want to add an meta X-UA-Compatible='chrome=1' (or whatever it is) is if I wanted to (a). allow IE users with CF installed a snappier browsing experience, or (b). I wanted to make use of features that only exist in modern browsers such as canvas or SVG or something.

      It's clear that Googles intent here is (b) in the above list, since they're the ones really pushing the limits of what is possible using currently available web-standards.... and by that, I mean what is possible with IE since IE is still the browser with market share.

      So.... from a web developers perspective, I can do nothing at all, and this doesn't affect me, or I can think about it a bit, continue building as I do, but add an X-UA-Compatible response-header/meta. I really really ain't that difficult IMHO!!

      Just to recap on Google's motivation here; it *isn't* about killing off IE6/7 (like most people seemed to think), but is about *all* versions of IE since not even IE8 supports bleeding edge functionality. All versions of IE are hindering the Google vision of web apps (think Google Wave here in particular), although Google Docs is kind of key here too.

      I think Google are preempting MS's response to Google web apps; in order for MS to transition MS Office to Office Web-apps (or whatever they're calling it), it seems entirely likely they'll push Silverlight. Sooooo, without Chrome-Frame, Google would have no answer to this, and darkness would once again descend upon the web!! [I _might_ be being overly dramatic!]

      Since it's relevant, I imagine that Win7 will ship with Silverlight installed and I imagine it will run regardless of which browser the user chooses. So hopefully, you can see the problem!

    9. Re:Important point by mcvos · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This has nothing to do wth Opera and Mozilla. If they support HTML5, canvas, CSS3 and have a good javascript engine, then they can just use that.

      Chrome Frame solves one really big problem: IE. If you don't think IE is a problem, then you can ignore it. If you don't have anything to do with IE, then you can ignore it. If you hate supporting IE, then you can now ignore IE and tell IE users to install CF.

      Face it, CF reduces fragmentaion. If you hate it so much, it's probably because you're in the Mozilla camp and you're upset you didn't think of it first. But as long as you stick to modern standards, there's no reason for you to emulate anyone, and you're free to completely ignore CF.

  4. Translation by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Translation: Those fucking bastards are probably going to do the same thing to Firefox!!!! Chair... Google... Must... throw...

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  5. sour grapes by dsanfte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds like sour grapes to me. Google has a technically superior engine, and Mozilla's whining about it. Well boo-hoo guys, how about cutting the crap and getting to work improving your product?

    --
    occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
    1. Re:sour grapes by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 2, Informative

      Stupid thing is.. they *did* think of it first, but didn't get their plugin released in time.

      http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/08/mozilla-drags-ie-into-the-future-with-canvas-element-plugin.ars

  6. If you really develop webapps IE8 is still useless by Rix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    IE8 doesn't support canvas, or svg, doesn't have a real javascript engine, and still mangles standard css.

    It can get by on simple web pages, but it's simply not suitable for real web apps. Anyone developing one either writes off IE completely, or is using the tools that Google's been releasing to augment IE's deficiencies.

  7. No offense to Firefox... by dr_wheel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... because I love and use it daily. But isn't Firefox 'plug-in soup'? Updates frequently breaking plugins, plugins sometimes breaking the browser, etc.

    Seems silly to me for them to make a comment like this.

    1. Re:No offense to Firefox... by ShadowRangerRIT · · Score: 3, Informative

      Add-ons for Firefox are much more restricted than they used to be, and as a result are (usually) more stable. And since they are supposed to state versions supported, they usually deactivate cleanly for untested versions of Firefox. As for real plugins, aside from one or two major releases (none in the last year) I've rarely seen a plugin that didn't work identically after upgrade. Most browsers have some plugin compatibility problems after a major release.

      The plugin soup is more of a problem if the browser behaves drastically differently as a result of the plugin. With Chrome Frame, most plugins for IE will not work with a page rendered in the Chrome Frame. Multiple copies of the plugin would need to be installed (e.g. Flash), or certain functionality that was only implemented for one browser would not be available in one or the other (e.g. some random third party text box spell checker).

      --
      $_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
  8. They hate our freedom by iamacat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    More options are good. There are many users who are forced to keep IE6 for work access to intranet sites and yet may want Google wave for personal use. This way they can access all their sites without having to remember which browser is for which and deal with different sets of bookmarks and cookies. What alternatives do Microsoft and Mozilla foundation propose for this group of people?

  9. Actual Mozilla blog posts by savala · · Score: 5, Informative

    Urgh, I hate these links to useless tech news websites, rather than the original sources. To see what the Mozilla executives in question actually had to say, with their words in context, read Mitchell Baker: Browser Soup and Chrome Frame and Mike Shaver: thoughts on chrome frame.

    And as a bonus, from a Mozilla-technology using developer (I don't think he's affiliated with Mozilla in any official capacity anymore) Daniel Glazman: Google Chrome Frame.

  10. Pot, kettle, black, Mozilla. Tsk, tsk. by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oh boy. Here we go.

    Mozilla drags IE into the future with Canvas element plugin

    Granted, Mozilla's technology doesn't do as much as Chrome Frame. It does less. But it introduced tag soup into IE. One can now, according to Mozilla's own damn hypocritic opinion because of a technological big brother envy, be sure of how IE render content.

    "Once your browser has fragmented into multiple rendering engines, it's very hard to manage information across Web sites" - Mozilla

    Oh, and how does adding canvas support reduce confusion when even more complete HTML 5 support won't?

    But read on guys... It get funnier.

    Ars Technica:

    This Canvas plugin is only the first step toward bringing standards-based web technologies to Internet Explorer. Mozilla is working on a much more ambitious initiative called Screaming Monkey that will make it possible to plug Mozilla's entire next-generation JavaScript engine directly into Microsoft's web browser. If these plugins gain widespread acceptance, it will empower web developers and give them the ability to target web standards and not have to compensate as much for Internet Explorer's broken behavior.

    Hahaha! I love this! Thanks for the laugh, Mozilla!

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    1. Re:Pot, kettle, black, Mozilla. Tsk, tsk. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But it introduced tag soup into IE

      IIRC Trident parses any "tag", HTML5 was designed around the behaviour of existing real world browsers like IE. I do canvas in XHTML 1.0 strict by extending the DTD.

      Screaming Monkey would replace Microsoft's JScript bringing with it a standards compliant DOM and increased performance (via nanojit).

      All Mozilla are saying is that Google's approach (the entire browser as a plugin) has poor integration with the existing IE shell, that's not a hypocritical position at all. Both organisations have, to their credit, invested time in producing turd polish to bring the modern web to organizations stuck with MSIE.

  11. Standards? by Sir_Lewk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If everyone would just follow the goddamned standards then we wouldn't have to worry about this shit. Yes I'm blaming all parties involved here, they are all either directly responsible, or too complacent.

    --
    "linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
  12. Reality check by Fished · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dudes... I work at a company whose standard is IE6. Not IE7, not IE8. IE6. And IE6 isn't even compatible with IE8 in some cases.

    The reason Google is releasing Chrome Frame is very simple--so that they can get Google Wave in the door of enterprises who have standardized on IE (including IE6) without having to develop 4 different versions of it (Standards Compliant, IE6, IE7, and IE8). They decided that doing Chrome Frame was easier, cheaper, and better for the future of Google Apps (broadly construed to include Wave) than continuing to pander to IE.

    I don't think they want to "enable" IE users... but they'd rather enable IE users to continue to be stupid than cripple their applications as they've been doing ever since gmail came out. From Google's point of view, this is ALL about the apps, not the browser wars.

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  13. Two conflicting thoughts by mr_josh · · Score: 2, Funny
    The web developer side of me says, "Yeah, this probably will not add conformity to things."

    The shit-disturber side of me says, "Take that, Redmond."

  14. About time by drkwatr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It is about time I started seeing technology of this nature, but we are still not there yet. I would love to see this framework system support plugins that way when I design a site I specify what rendering engine is needed, and the browser simply loads it and renders my page 100% correct 100% of the time. It would also make it easer for the W3C to push standards as they could release their own rendering engine as soon as they are published and everyone could start using them so long as the browser supports framework plugins. There is also an added benefit that more time could be spent on the main functions of the browser and other stuff rather than messing with rendering. Anyways, If I don't see anything in the next few years I am going to have to put together a division and scratch that itch.

    1. Re:About time by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The standards aren't broken. What is broken is Microsoft's browsers. Its easier to build plugins to fix IE than it is to wrestle control of Microsoft away and force them to fix IE. Hopefully, if this plugin sees enough use, that in itself will leverage MS to fix IE. Note: it will NOT be the same mess as today, because instead of having to code for Gecko, Trident, and Webkit, you could choose one (preferably standards compliant) and code to just that one, and let the plugin do the work. While the *easy* way would be for IE to become standards compliant and make this unnecessary that just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

  15. ad- and script-blockers are essential Re:IE by davidwr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites (AdBlock Plus and NoScript may be desirable, but not necessary).

    They are if you browse in certain wild-west not-so-professionally-managed portions of the web!

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  16. Hold on a second.... by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who said soup is a bad thing? I like soup, damn it!

    --
    There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
  17. IE faster? IE renders properly? by wardk · · Score: 2, Funny

    this must be stopped!

  18. "browser-in-a-browser will confuse users" by techdavis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Odd - I have for the past few years always used the "IE Tab" plugin for Firefox - that makes the pages render in IE (for IE specific sites, like windows update). Isn't that EXACTLY the same thing?

  19. Re:"loss of control?" by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I kind of like it resting with me. My browser, my control.

    I'm also not all that broken up about it being harder to "manage" information across sessions.

  20. Google Frame by slimjim8094 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been thinking about Google Frame. Honestly, I think it's too good a stopgap. Let me explain:

    People have Internet Explorer. It sucks. Or people have Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Safari/... and they all work the same (almost).

    People who have IE are mostly unable or unwilling to install, well, anything else.

    Chrome is good in that installing a browser plugin is easier (and more familiar) for most people than installing a browser. They do it all the time - Flash, Java, SuperPornSearch - even if they shouldn't.

    So Chrome Frame is nice, in that regard, in that I as a web developer can have IE say "install this to view this page", or otherwise throw up a "You must have at least Flash 7 to view this content"-type page. Those errors seem to be effective, for the most part.

    But it's bad in the sense that if everybody requires Chrome Frame, and everybody has it, that's dandy. But it's still running IE.

    In short, it's a stopgap. But it's a very good stopgap. Potentially so good that people won't switch to a real browser. And that's bad.

    --
    I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
    1. Re:Google Frame by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If everyone has chrome frame it won't matter - IE becomes merely a UI around it, hence no more relevant to the 'browser wars' than whether they have Aero switched on or not. People can code to standards and expect it to work, at last.

      If gmail starts to require frame that'll be a huge number of users suddenly using it.. if they do the same to youtube (ditch the flash and use canvas instead) then its numbers will skyrocket. There's nothing stopping google doing either of these things.

  21. Browser-in-a-browser by awshidahak · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Baker says Chrome Frame's browser-in-a-browser will confuse users and render some of their familiar tools useless.

    Kinda like IETab in Firefox?

  22. huh? Where's the market? by stokessd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Anybody who is using IE6 is either so clueless that they wouldn't know about this plugin, or they are forced to use IE6 because certain websites are coded for it. Either way it seems more like a fun stunt than anything viable.

    I do all my work web surfing on firefox, but when I need to do one of my many yearly training courses, I have to fire up IE6 because the courses break in weird ways with firefox. So the only reason I'm in IE is that I'm forced to be, and this plugin would break the very reason I'm in IE in the first place.

    Sheldon

  23. Re:Well, then Mozilla... by Ralph+Spoilsport · · Score: 3, Insightful
    For now I think the people who should be worried are not Mozilla, but Adobe. Some of the stuff coming out of HTML5 demos looks extremely nifty, and uses a fraction of the power that flash uses.

    And not a moment too soon, because Flash sucks ass.

    The only thing I use it for is embedding video. Groovy menus? AJAX and CSS. Flash was a great idea when we all had dial up. We've moved on from there, and we all learned not to build flash based splash pages. This makes Flash a fairly useless application. I look forward to it dying, like its bloated predecessor, Director.

    --
    Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
  24. Re:Who, other than Microsoft? by shirotakaaki · · Score: 3, Funny

    Shit is constantly broken in Lynx! Images still don't show up right without hacks! WTF is up with that!? And forget about Flash. Adobe hates Lynx.

  25. Re:If you really develop webapps IE8 is still usel by micheas · · Score: 2, Informative

    The fourth most visited website is generally considered to be a major website, and it has dropped support for IE6.

    I don't break functionality of IE6 sites, but if the off by three bug shows up on IE6 whatever, It's an old browser,and people that use it, like the people that use Netscape 4 don't really expect the web to work completely correct.

    --
    Work bio at MMWD
  26. Re:If you really develop webapps IE8 is still usel by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anyone developing one either writes off IE completely, or is using the tools that Google's been releasing to augment IE's deficiencies.

    Really, those are our 2 options? Either don't support IE, or use something from Google. Oddly enough, I've been getting by for years without doing either of those. Granted, my "real web apps" don't need canvas or SVG. The vast majority of mature Javascript libraries around have no problems supporting IE with the vast majority of their functionality, what's your excuse? I've been supporting tens of thousands of corporate (read IE) users who spend hours each day using large ajax applications that I've built. I've got an installation with over 70,000 users on it where about 1% of the front-end code is HTML, and the rest is Javascript and CSS. IE8 runs that application just fine.

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  27. Re:If you really develop webapps IE8 is still usel by FictionPimp · · Score: 2, Informative

    My company no longer requires me to write to IE6. In fact they don't even care if it fails gracefully in IE6. I however tend to make sure my sites fail gracefully even if javascript and css are not functioning properly.

    Our internal websites are different, they have to work in IE7/IE8 but do not have to be perfect. For example, one site had nice rounded corners that everyone loved. However the method I was using was not implemented in IE yet (It's a safari/firefox thing). I could of been forced to write javascript to do this in IE. But instead we just decided it wasn't worth it.

    Another example is a long running report we have. It takes a long time to get the data. To improve the feel of the report I rewrote it be dynamic and have sortable columns and real time updates to options (year, etc). Firefox and safari handle this wonderfully. IE7 and IE8 simply barf on the amount of data. It can take minutes to refresh. Some of the sorting simply crashes the browser completely. It was decided to just remove the crashing features from IE and put a disclaimer about the sort time. No point in trying to figure out how to speed it up when it works almost instantly in firefox/safari.

  28. Re:"loss of control?" by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, if your asking for a vote, I'd vote to give W3C some teeth. Seems to me it should be, 1) User of the browser. 2) W3C. 3) Browser. 4) Web site author.

  29. Blackboard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Many universities use this POS.

    http://www.blackboard.com/

    Its a user-unfriendly mish-mash of forums, teacher news posts, file transfer, PM, and file upload functionality. It could entirely be duplicated using existing open source softwares in a superior manner if someone tied together a whole suite of apps and unified the interface. All I know is I can normally trust a website to be able to Attach A File in most any browser, I thought we had that one licked back in 98.

    Of course my School isn't even Worried about Firefox...

    Internet Explorer 8 has not been certified to be compatible with Blackboard. Be aware you may run into issues using IE 8 with Blackboard. Using the IE 8 compatibility view may help. Click this link for more information... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956197/LN/ For information on how to revert back to IE 7, click this link... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700

  30. Economics by GradiusCVK · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree 100%. There are a lot of people on here crying about how "IE SUCKS! We shouldn't fix it, we should force people to use a real browser!" etc... You know what? If the reason IE sucks is strictly because of its crappy JS engine and standards incompatibilities, and Google has now effectively fixed that, then what's wrong with people using IE?

    Don't get me wrong... I love open source. I love Firefox. I use both almost exclusively for work and for play. I know that Firefox is strictly superior in numerous ways to IE. That said, my company is heavily web-centric, and if Firefox has to lose some market share, even die out completely (which it won't... it's open source), in order for everybody to have a standards compliant browser, I say FINE. Besides the fact that we spend about 1/4 of our time coding specifically to IE, my next biggest opposition to IE is the fact that MS has it on lock-down... well, with this plugin MS has to share its control over IE with Google... if MS cuts out Google and this plugin doesn't work anymore, then guess what? IE doesn't work on any websites anymore, either. FAIL. Not to say that Google is perfect either, but I think an evil conspiracy between the two down the road is an unlikely scenario.

    A web browser is ultimately just a means to an end. There are trillions of dollars tied up in companies who develop content for the web, and just a few companies who develop significant browsers for it. How many billions of dollars could be saved every year if we simply didn't have to worry about how badly IE sucks ass?

    For the retards out there who still don't understand why this is the only logical position for anybody who isn't a browser developer, here's an exaggerated car analogy. Say Microsoft started making shitty cars, and Mozilla started making a better open source car... And then Google created a magical perpetual motion machine for Microsoft's cars which eliminated the need for any fuel and produced food for starving children as its only byproduct. Would we all be up in arms about "OH NOES everybody's gonna start using the M$ shit car!!!1111"? What is up with your priorities, Slashdot???