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September 22, 2010

Google Chrome Frame, Out of Beta

Internet Explorer users who can't update the browser or switch to a better browser have another option for running modern web apps: Google Chrome Frame, a plug-in that uses Google Chrome to render the pages that include a required tag. Chrome Frame is now out of beta and can be installed if you use Internet Explorer 6, 7 or 8.

Google Chrome Frame is especially valuable for enterprise users, so Google added a MSI installer that helps IT administrators deploy the software in a network.

Microsoft has recently released the first beta of Internet Explorer 9 and showed that it can develop a browser that's fast, standards-compliant and better suited for running web apps. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 9 can't be installed in Windows XP, which is still the most popular operating system. Even if Internet Explorer 8 has been released more than one year ago, almost half of the users haven't upgraded to the latest version of the browser.

Chrome Frame is already used by many Google services: Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Orkut and other services will start to support it soon. Chromium's blog says that the main goals are to "to improve performance and ease the transition for users as they drop support for legacy browsers". After installing Chrome Frame in Internet Explorer 8, I noticed that Google Reader loaded much faster and had a better performance. If you want, you can load all the pages using Chrome Frame, but it's not recommended to do that.

6 comments:

  1. "Vanessa Fox. Nude."? :)

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  2. Go to www.vanessafoxnude.com, you'll understand.

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  3. IMHO Chrome Frame is Google's most evil product. If you can't install Chrome, hacking your install of Internet Explorer is probably just going to cause your IT support headaches when they try and figure out why your web-based app that depends on IE no longer works.

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  4. I totally disagree with Will, I am an I.T. admin as well as a web-developer. Chrome Frame gives Website developers the choice of which rendering engine to use, and the user the choice of browser skin.

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  5. I also disagree with Will. If, like me, you're stuck in a company filled with Windows XP machines, and want to develop HTML 5 apps, you're stuck.

    Unfortunately, on my Windows 7 laptop, which does have Google Chrome installed, Google ChromeFrame utterly refuses to install.

    At best, it presents an error saying a conflicting version of Chrome is already installed. At worst, the install begins... then quietly dies. No errors or anything. (I do have full Admin rights.)

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