Submitted by Tony on Wed, 2009-09-23 01:14

Google have released Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8. Chrome Frame provides the power of Google's speedy JavaScript engine and Safari's WebKit rendering engine for Internet Explorer.
So this is only a plugin not a new browser but for all those people stuck in offices that aren't allowed to upgrade their browser, which I believe is the majority of Internet Explorer users, maybe they can install a plugin.
If you are using Internet Explorer 6 and can't install another browser then you really should take a look at Chrome Frame. Find out more

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I'm confused (and too lazy

Submitted by Hugo on Wed, 2009-09-23 06:43.

:? I'm confused (and too lazy to visit links) So Google have managed to replace the Trident rendering engine with Webkit. How is that possible and why had no one been able to do this earlier? This has been at the root of our collective misery dealing with IE over the years, if we had been able to customise IE in this manner MS may have sat up earlier and done something about IE's myriad issues?

The good old browser wars are going to pale into insignificance compared to the war that is going to be waged between these two behemoths.

Hi Hugo, It's a plugin so

Submitted by Tony on Wed, 2009-09-23 11:37.

Hi Hugo,
It's a plugin so needs to be downloaded and installed. I don't do windows, so I'm not sure how exactly you would go about installing it. What it does is render the webpage within a browser frame, a bit like those links you follow sometimes that put the site in a frame. All controls etc should still work.

IE8 runs 10 times faster with Google plug-in

Submitted by Tony on Fri, 2009-09-25 06:55.

Here's another reason to check out Chrome Frame.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138459/IE8_runs_10_times_faster_with_Google_plug_in

What however I do note is

Submitted by Hugo on Fri, 2009-09-25 07:57.

What however I do note is that Google frame will still use Trident unless the web page requested has a meta tag triggering Google Frame to use it's Webkit engine, so it's back to us poor developers to have yet something else to think about Smile

If it indeed does run 10 times faster that sounds like some trick, IE always did seem to run reasonably quickly, partly due to the majority of the app being preloaded as explorer.exe and a trick where MS decided that they could circumvent the handshake protocol by not waiting for the response.

I think it's the JavaScript

Submitted by Tony on Fri, 2009-09-25 10:43.

I think it's the JavaScript processing that is faster.

Quote:

Computerworld ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite three times each for IE8 with Chrome Frame, and IE8 without the plug-in, then averaged the scores.

Still it sounds really good.