Google’s Chromium Blog has just announced the Chrome Frame, an open-source plug-in that enables Internet Explorer to run HTML5 and other advanced web technologies. Chrome Frame also steps on Microsoft’s toes a little, since it’s also a way for Google to give loyal IE users a taste of Google Chrome.
According to a post on the Chromium Blog, Google Chrome Frame was developed to help both users and web developers. For developers, Google Chrome Frame would enable them to develop applications that are as fast and richer as Google Wave.
In addition, Google also subtly hits on the inadequacy of the Internet Explorer to adopt new Internet technologies such as HTML5 and Javascript rendering. Hence, the need for an IE plug-in that will make all these happen. Google is making these possible in IE without additional coding or testing for different browser versions.
If you are a developer, you can easily implement the Google Chrome Frame by adding the following line on your site’s HTML codes.
<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”chrome=1″>
This line will automatically trigger IE to use Google Chrome’s Webkit-based rendering engine. Booyah!
For IE users, installing Google Chrome Frame enables them to enjoy web apps at a faster speed similar to how they experience it when using Google Chrome.
Another reason of course why Google came up with the Google Chrome Frame is perhaps to prepare and persuade IE users to use Google Wave which is built on HTML5. Google needs these IE users but persuading them to use Google Chrome over IE seems harder to do than persuading them to install the Google Chrome Frame plug-in.
Google’s announcement has elicited reactions from various bloggers around the searchosphere and we’ve quoted some of them below:
Philipp Lanssen of Blogoscoped said that Google Chrome Frame “might even further push Microsoft towards implementing Canvas in IE natively, just to avoid having developers push a Google plug-in for users.”
Garett Rogers of ZDNet “wonders on how excited Microsoft would get if Google made the Google Chrome rendering engine the default one in IE.”
I wonder how excited Microsoft would get if Google made the Google Chrome rendering engine the default one in Internet Explorer?
Clint Boulton of Google Watch thinks that there is probably more to this story than what’s on the surface that we aren’t seeing just yet. He further suspects the Chrome Frame will be a big determiner of how well Wave is adopted by those millions of workers who are stuck using IE 6 because of corporate regulations.
Adam Ostrow of Mashable believes that this will potentially accelerate the demise of IE6, and not-so-subtly attack Microsoft in the process.
Your thoughts?
