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Google Updates Chrome Frame, Makes IE Better
superapecommando writes "Google updated Chrome Frame, a plugin that embeds the company's Chrome browser engine into rival Microsoft's Internet Explorer, to a beta version.
As it did last year, Google cast Chrome Frame today as a way for IE users to instantly boost the notoriously slow JavaScript speed of their browser and let them access sites and web applications that rely on standards that IE doesn't support, primarily HTML5."
ie sucks.
..does this mean I can browse the internet while I browse the internet?
On a more serious note, why embed one browser into another? Why not just install the other browser? Even with installation restrictions, there are 'portable' versions of alternative browsers.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
This was going to be first post but I was using IE.
America, Home of the Brave.
Even with installation restrictions, there are 'portable' versions of alternative browsers.
The restrictions go deeper. Have you ever run into a Unix system where all end-user-writable directories (including /home and /media) were mounted noexec for security purposes? Windows has a similar feature, called Software Restriction Policies, which can deny execution of a program based on folder location (as in Linux) or based on lack of the IT department's digital signature.
Arg, my head hurts now.
That said, I think you mean IE Tab 2; the original is apparently deprecated.
Javascript in IE is hardly 'notoriously' slow
It's slow enough that web developers have to work around IE's slow JavaScript engine and lack of other features useful to web applications by making web applications significantly less sophisticated.
(yeah I'm sure some faggoty benchmark with no real-world value 'proves' it)
Every new web technology is implemented in "some faggoty benchmark with no [apparent] real-world value" before it gets implemented in an ad-supported or subscription-supported web site. The main reason that HTML5 technologies aren't used on more publicly accessible web sites is because 53 percent of the audience is still using IE.
Apple, for example, has been aggressively promoting HTML5 as a substitute for Adobe's Flash, which Apple has banned from its iPhone and iPad.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trumpeting the support for HTML5 it's baking into IE9, which has no firm release date and is now at a rough developer preview stage.
Google has been promoting HTML5 just as hard. Last month, for example, Google debuted a new royalty-free video codec that will compete with the H.264 codec that Apple's backing for HTML5.
Wow, everyone is in agreement then? You'd think that they would be dumping a lot of time and money into their respective rendering engines to get a leg up on the competition instead of just paying HTML5 lip service. What's the holdup on implementing some of these features? And if this is the next great thing for the internet why does it seem like everyone is dragging their feet? I understand you have to be security and performance minded and that there are some issues with codecs and containers but aside from that is rendering HTML5 standards really that complicated?
My work here is dung.
http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/google-chrome-frame-now-in-beta.html
Google Chrome Frame - Now in Beta
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Web developers have been itching to develop with HTML5 but have been held back by legacy browsers. Google Chrome Frame can help break this impasse by allowing applications to target HTML5 on versions of Internet Explorer. Today, we're excited to announce that Google Chrome Frame has graduated from Developer Preview into Beta.
Since our initial launch, we've been listening to developers: Instead of adding new bells and whistles, we've fixed more than 200 bugs to make integration with Internet Explorer seamless while improving security, stability, and performance. For example, we've improved our handling of Internet Explorer's InPrivate browsing, cache clearing, and cookie blocking. All of the enhancements and features of Google Chrome 5.0 are available in Google Chrome Frame too, including HTML5 audio and video, canvas, geolocation, workers, and databases.
As we've worked on these improvements, we've been excited to see sites adopting Google Chrome Frame, including Meebo and all the blogs hosted by WordPress. In addition to our launch partner Google Wave, some other Google properties, including Orkut and YouTube are also relying on Google Chrome Frame to deliver HTML5 experiences to millions of users.
For those of you who want to develop HTML5 applications and deploy them broadly, we encourage you to give Google Chrome Frame a try. Existing users will be auto-updated to the beta, so if you downloaded Google Chrome Frame before, you'll automatically get the new version. We're also creating a new dev channel release, where you can try out the cutting-edge features we're developing. For information on getting started with Google Chrome Frame, our project documentation is the place to start.
We're always working hard to improve, so expect further enhancements and performance improvements in both the developer and beta versions in the coming weeks. You can help by giving us feedback and filing bugs, and we'll have more to share in the days ahead.
Posted by Amit Joshi, Software Engineer, and Alex Russell, Software Engineer
I heard you like webpages, so we put a browser in your browser so you can browse while you browse
AccountKiller
You know, Google should really make a Firefox equivalent, I like Chrome's rendering engine but hate the interface. There is no ability to customize anything, I have custom CSS that I use on a few sites to block ads and to make the site look nicer, with Chrome there is no default option to do it, in Firefox there is, in IE there is, not in Chrome. Plus, no control over simple things like history, is it too much to ask that Chrome keeps cookies and such but just doesn't keep a history? I'm not paranoid about someone looking through my history, its just annoying to have it there, I never use it so why have it?
In short, I really, really like Firefox but its rendering engine is getting behind on the times when compared to Chrome. It would be nice if there was a feature like Chrome Frame for Firefox so I could use the nice Chrome rendering engine without having to adapt to the terrible interface of Chrome.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Any Custom Web App built by our company for either ourselves or our clients is 100% designed for IE.
So do you just turn down any client that A. is a Mac shop, B. is a Linux shop, or C. wants a web application that can be used by the client's customers, 47 percent of which use something other than IE?
But so long as it doesn't dramaticly alter the display or functionality of the code we write, I think it'd be A-OK.
The same X-UA-Compatible header that tells IE 8 whether to use IE 7 or IE 8 mode also tells Chrome Frame whether to turn itself on. Do all your testing in Google Chrome with an occasional spot-check in Firefox, and just require IE users to use Chrome Frame.
"let them access sites and Web applications that rely on standards that IE doesn't support, primarily HTML5."
What does this mean? HTML5 is still in dev. Are there really sites or app that *rely* on it?
The only things that browsers can support is the latest betas of this of HTML5.
MS basing is one thing about standards but is it is another to quote standards that do not exist yet.........
I like Chrome's rendering engine but hate the interface.
Do you like Safari better? It uses the same WebKit, and so do all these other browsers.
I wonder how Microsoft likes being played at its own 'Embrace and Extend' game ;)
Since the dawn of the web, browser makers have been implementing features outside the official standard. At least this time around, the features they want are supposedly part of an upcoming standard, instead of hacked in willy-nilly.
The days of the proprietary plugin are numbered, and for good reason. We've got to get this party started, and if that means implementing an unfinished standard, then so be it.
Chrome has an extremely powerful searchable history, which defaults to the only view I've ever used: pages by most recently viewed.
As for customization, I admit I got lucky. The Chrome UI is the kind of minimalism I could never even customize Firefox to use. I actually ended up ditching Firefox on my Eee because it just took up so much more screen space than Chromium. But if that's not what you're looking for in a UI, I do have to agree that it's frustratingly fixed in this layout.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
See, thats what I don't like. I really have no desire to have anything other than bookmarks appear in the search bar and really would like to disable history altogether (I never understood the point of it to begin with) and Chrome doesn't give that option.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So Chrome Frame delete IE and installs Firefox?
Javascript in IE is hardly 'notoriously' slow
Depends on what version you're talking about. IE6 is notoriously slow. First time I noticed it was in 2006, when I wanted it to loop through a list of 400 items. Takes ages in IE6. (Reducing the number of references that need to be followed helps a lot, though.)
So they are apps designed for a browser platform specfic implementation of a dev version of HTML5. Hardly standards like what was implied........
As I tried (but apparently failed) to imply, it starts platform-specific and then becomes less so. A company first makes an "iPhone version" of a site for Safari and later expands it to a more generic "handheld HTML5 version" that also covers Chrome for Android and Firefox for Maemo. Then the HTML5 features slowly migrate from the @media handheld (smartphone) view of the site to the @media screen (PC) view of the site, and sites start recommending that IE users install Chrome Frame or upgrade to newer IE.
That's funny, it's almost as if Chromium didn't use GTK
protip: most graphics toolkits are highly customizable and can be make to look like whatever you want
I don't know why you got modded troll instead of me. Maybe someone disagreed with you. =/
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Administrative rights are needed to install Chrome Frame so it's still useless for most ordinary corporate users
we herd u like browsin so we put a browser in yo browser so u can browse while u browse.
also, we herd u like macs so we put one pedal in ur car.
(ahem, i don't actually have a problem with macs, i just thought that last one is too good to pass up. well, i don't like the way apple exerts control over the entire hardware/software stack, but as long as we have options i guess i don't have a problem with them existing in general, i just won't buy one.)
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
I disagree. Although I believe Vimperator to be even more minimalist.
I can understand claiming Firefox to be slower, more bloated, less feature full by default - but lack of customization ability seems strange, at least.
Dilbert RSS feed
Does the plug-in call home with your browsing history for targeted ads?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) doesn't supply a reference but does claim that "literature cites practical examples of virtualization five levels deep."
That other companies have to tidy up the mess that Microsoft always end up creating.
Wait, that's actually sad.
Already a large number of companies are flat-out refusing to continue with the constant "upgrade" cycle with the new Windows because of the stupidly high hardware requirements.
Why won't they just release a version of the OS built for Office needs? Or low base requirements in general? People aren't going to upgrade their computers just because you release a new version of an OS with horrible base requirements.
You don't need a bloody gaming machine to edit some documents.
ALL of those features could be done on a lower end machine perfectly fine. There are quite a few graphics heavy window managers out there for other OSes that get on fine on even my old ass Toshiba laptop with 660Mhz CPU and on-board graphics!
So much for killing off IE6, not even releasing IE9 for XP because they are, well, clueless as to how they will implement some of the features because Win Vis7a is soooo much better at doing that hardware acceleration, DESPITE the fact that other browsers and programs are capable of doing it!
Microsoft aren't doing themselves any favors by not releasing it. They are the ones losing out because trying to use IE9 as a reason to get people to upgrade is laughable at best.
Until Microsoft realize that the people who depend on ActiveX will NOT, ABSOLUTELY NOT upgrade, there will still be older IE users, loads of them at that.
Until they release a version of IE6 embedded and sandboxed in to the newer versions, absolutely none of them will upgrade unless some random dude comes up to the company and offers to freely upgrade the ActiveX crapware intranets that they created when they thought they could control and extinguish the web as a platform.
Good luck Microsoft, hope you enjoy the irony in all of this, WE SURE DON'T.
It should be pointed out that Google's promotion of Javascript and its use is self-serving (if their apps don't run using Javascript then I'd imagine that they don't run at all). It also goes without even a very long discussion that promoting Javascript is potentially promoting security holes as well as excessive CPU use (and thus the browser using more electricity and being non-Green) as well as network overhead (delaying the network for everyone).
Now, if Javascript were used intelligently, i.e. no code is transmitted unless the user requests it, no code executes unless the user allows it and web sites were designed to be be fully functional *without* Javascript then its promotion might be reasonable. But that is hardly the case for the web as it sits today.
HTML is a *display* language. It exists to distribute information and there are many many Internet users who are very happy with that use. I don't need any part of that "interactive experience" that some people seem to desire. I especially don't need or want costs or risks imposed on me by web designers without my permission. As Joe Friday used to say, "Just the facts, Mam."
If Google spent half as much time improving the "display" aspects (speed, efficiency, power use, etc.) as they spent on improving Javascript we would have a very cool browser in chrome. But that does not appear to be the case.
So I just retested the latest Chrome Frame.
Appears to still have same bugs with HTML parsing reported by multiple users back in original chrome frame a year ago.
These are issues that don't exist in IE or Chrome.
Just Chrome Frame.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
As a web developer, I've always used the history window in Firefox as a base for my time tracking - gives me a pretty good idea of how many hours I spend browsing Slashdot and how many minutes I spend on customer websites.
Check out this bug, which I posted over two weeks ago, with no response yet from anyone at Google.
Don't believe me? Try it. I posted a very, very simple php file which illustrates the problem.
Basically, when you post as text/plain, the browser is not supposed to URL-encode the input. Chrome just happily does it anyway. It seems like this would break about a million websites, so I'm kinda stumped as to what is going on, but other browsers do the correct thing.
This isn't the only bug I've found, but it's the biggest, most glaring one. I don't understand how it got out the door.
The real question is why Microsoft doesn't implement "IE6 Frame", so all those companies that require Internet Explorer 6 compatibility can upgrade their desktop operating systems and browsers to something more modern.
IE6 is dead! Long live IE6! Or something like that...
Sure they are. Ctrl+H.
I am not devoid of humor.
Because the Google Toolbar only works in IE. With the Google Frame, my wife can have her Autofill, her floating Translations and her vertical Bookmarks tab in IE, while still getting the fast and wonderful rendering of the Chrome engine.