Google Chrome Frame

Posted by Steven | Filed under Microsoft, Web Standards

The path to resolving the “how do we move on from IE6″ debate has taken yet another twist this month with Google launching Google Chrome Frame, a simple to install plugin which replaces the rendering engine of IE with the engine from Google Chrome.  This solution isn’t just for IE6 but works in all versions of IE from 6 up to 8, to take advantage of it all the web developer has to do is add a simple tag to their website:

<meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“chrome=1″>

Here’s the video from Google announcement here which goes into more detail:

Great I hear you all say, no more having to cope with IE6/7/8 rendering issues, we can just develop for Chrome (webkit engine) and the Firefox engine which are far less problematic than IE!  Yeah, in a utopian world that might be the case but as we know, that’s not how the world works, here’s the issues:

  • - Large corporates with locked down desktops are very unlikely to install Google Chrome Frame, after all most haven’t even upgraded from IE6 yet
  • - Home users or less experienced users are very unlikely to understand why they’d want to do this, again they are still using IE6 for a reason, it works for them!  This user group has had the free choice to upgrade to two newer versions of IE and a multitude of other browsers and still haven’t, so why would they install Google Chrome Frame?

From a technological standpoint, Google Chrome Frame is brilliant!  I just don’t see how it’s going to change the status quo, we’ve still got the same problems to overcome and like it or not IE6 is still going to be around for a time to come. In my opinion the best solution to the ongoing IE6 issue is to continue getting the message out to people that IE6 is passed its use by date and far better and more functional options available for free!  Through Windows Update we should hopefully move the home user market onto IE7/8…eventually!  As for the larger corporates, with the advent of Windows 7 we should hopefully see a substantial number of corporates upgrading from Windows XP and with it a further reduction of IE6.

While I admire Google for their ingenuity in coming up with this solution I just don’t think it really is a solution, anyone installing the plugin would be better off just installing Chrome or Firefox instead!  It seems to me this is part of a larger attempt by Google to continue their assault on reducing IE market share.

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Read more | Comments (0) | September 24th, 2009