...if Google is going to pull the embrace, extend and extinguish routine on Microsoft. I hope I live to see that day.
Well, it should certainly be embarrassing for the IE development group at MS to have their Arch Nemesis add these features to their product. Chair throwing time? But what could be holding Microsoft back? It's not like they don't hire phd coders just like Google, both places are swimming in overachievers. Must be a management problem...
It's the 8 hours a week that really powers Google's innovation. For those who don't know, Google employees are supposed to dedicate 8 hours a week of company time to some personal project. Those 8 hours have been responsible for Docs, gMail, Maps, Earth, code search, scholar search, etc., etc. People have ideas, give your employees a chance to explore them a bit and you might be surprised what they come up with on their own.
Google Docs is based on two applications: Writely, by Upstartle, and XL2Web, by 2Web Technologies. Google Earth was originally named Earth Viewer and it was created by Keyhole, inc. Google Maps was created for the company Where 2 Technologies.
Code and Scholar search, in spite of being useful, are nothing more than variations of Google Search, so from that list only GMail was truly created at Google.
Former google employee here. "Supposed to" became "allowed to" became "might". Google is doing some cool things (and some scary things), but they're not the company they used to be.
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft. Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
IE still has a very enterprise-oriented development cycle and not the bleeding edge feature explosion we see in most open source browsers.
I don't think IE needs to catch up so much as Microsoft simply needs to release an unstable browser in additio
You don't really know what you're talking about here.
IE hasn't caught up to existing, published, finished standards- that's well before we even start talking about initial implementations of things from the in-progress HTML 5 standard. It's the worst browser in the bunch for CSS compatibility- with finished, published standards.
IE needs to play catch-up before it can even think about doing anything with HTML 5. They don't need an unstable browser fork; they just need to actually finish their standards implementations in the stable releases. They're getting better at it, definitely, but they've got a long way to go.
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft.
In Firefox, this page [w3.org] shows "W3C Working Draft" along the left side.
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
A lot of the features that Acid3 tests aren't new proposals in any sense; they've been around for years. WebKit (basis for Chrome and Safari), Gecko (Firefox and SeaMonkey), and Presto (Opera) all score above 90/100, which handily beats IE 8's 20/100.
That's not implying all of them are. IE is only supporting finished standards.
This might be a credible statement if Microsoft actually had a reasonable track record of supporting finished standards.
And if so many other organizations with notably smaller pools of resources hadn't managed to run circles around them over the last 5-7 years, not only supporting "unfinished" standards but doing a better job at implementing the finished ones.
Whatever is going on with IE can't be reasonably explained by stating that they're sticking with finished standards.
Between that and Microsoft's well-known history, one has to wonder why any intelligent person would actually even be able to forward that as an explanation of choice.
I didn't say it supports all finished standards. That would be a bold claim. That's a fair criticism. I am simply saying that IE generally doesn't support not-yet-standardized "standards" features.
(And the first public working draft was published Jan 2008).
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
I don't work off these lists either, but I'm aware of a numer of high profile parts of it, say, the Canvas element. I'm sure Microsoft is too.
IE still has a very enterprise-oriented development cycle
Is this what we call their six year hiatus from actually working on their product?
In the late 1990s they showed they were quite capable of aggressively expanding IE's features, including new if raggedly incomplete support for emerging standards, when they decided it was in their interest to do it.
the bleeding edge feature explosion we see in most open source browsers.
A lot of the features discussed for HTML 5 have had visible implementations for 3-4 years. You could call them bleeding edge in 2006, maybe 2007. 2009? Not without looking pretty silly.
I don't think IE needs to catch up so much as Microsoft simply needs to release an unstable browser in addition to their platform browser if they want to compete with the rest of the non-standard "standards" cult.
The competing products seem to do just fine at keeping a comparable level of stability along with the pushing the envelope. In fact, given how much Opera, Mozilla, and Safari, have been able to do with resources that are orders of magnitude smaller, there's really no excuse.
Except of course if you're talking about CSS 2.1, where it is the best.
Can you defend this claim? Because based on my experiences *using* CSS over the last 7 years, there hasn't been a time when any version of IE could even claim they weren't maddeningly, brokenly worse.
Can you defend this claim? Because based on my experiences *using* CSS over the last 7 years, there hasn't been a time when any version of IE could even claim they weren't maddeningly, brokenly worse.
IE properly requires the tbody element when adding DOM tables to a document!:P
As it happens, IE8's support for CSS2.1 is fairly good in the sense that everything that is clearly defined in the spec is in fact implemented, to my knowledge.
That does mean that things that are _not_ clearly defined might not be interoperable with other browsers. That's not exactly IE's fault; it's the spec's fault. The other browsers are not exactly interoperable with each other on those points either.
It also means that CSS features that are not in CSS2.1 (e.g. many of th
Popular doesn't mean standard. These are separate concepts. If it did, then every browser except for IE could be considered non-standard. Canvas is only popular within the enthusiast web developer clique, or "circle jerk" if you will.
Yes, what would those narcissistic onanist web developers know about the relevance of the canvas tag to creating... web applications?
Wow, since some snarky webtrash said it, it must be true.
I haven't gotten snarky yet, but perhaps I will when you explain what "webtrash" means. I certainly hope it's not your term for someone who actually has a working understanding of the issues we've been discussing.
I tend to use the test suites when referencing this:
That's *awesome*. With IE 8, we can now say that after 8 years of lagging behind, the browser created by the world's richest software company marginally edges out Firefox 3 in a feature-by-feature comparison CSS 2.1 features! Gives you a surge of pride, right? Why, if it constituted the most commonly used version of the product, that'd almost be the same thing as giving the world back all the man-hours spent trying to work around the support that wasn't there until this year!
On a different topic, I'd be interested in your take on the relative importance in day-to-day terms of, say @page:left and reliable absolute positioning.
Very true indeed. Every time an enterprise upgrades their version of IE, everything in the enterprise dependent on IE stops working which means another cycle of development at the enterprise.
While it's true that many "enterprise" apps make use of ActiveX, it seems kind of stupid to design a Web app that depends on a spacific version of an application known to update every few years (like a browser).
Well my user agent string right now is: (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.212.0 Safari/532.0), which says I'm running the latest Chrome very nicely on my Linux box.
It's daily builds of Chromium. I've been running it now for a week, and it has not crashed on me a single time. There is a x86 version, as well as a AMD64 version, and the 64-bit ver
Google are taking the matter into their own hands and actually putting resources towards improving IE, because they know that MS will not do it in any reasonable way.
Google are taking the matter into their own hands and actually putting resources towards improving IE, because they know that MS will not do it in any reasonable way.
Prediction: when YouTube dumps Flash, the new 'YouTube installer' is this.
Google are taking the matter into their own hands and actually putting resources towards improving IE, because they know that MS will not do it in any reasonable way.
Yeah, in other words, pretty much what everybody else has been doing over the last decade with their collection of hacks, their CSS reset sheets, and their javascript libraries.
One wonders what the cost of the lost productivity involved in working with the deliberately broken portions of Microsoft's software is... or how much more productive the industry as a whole would be if IE faded away...
Last I checked, webkit browsers other than Chrome for Windows have some pretty hefty security holes and dire vulnerabilities. The question is whether google is dropping in a tiny webkit panel or a full chrome instance within this tab. Their implementation here is very important because they may end up simply shattering IE 8's security model and leaving an exploitable hole in users' systems.
Google better take this very seriously before advertising this on their search and mail pages, etc.
It's strictly "opt in" for web developers, so don't worry, for websites that don't explicitly request Google Chrome Frame, you'll keep the security you've come to expect from Microsoft!!!
(I know ANY website can request GCF to turn itself on but I just wanted to make that little joke.)
Note: forcing websites into Google Chrome Frame with these techniques may lead to unexpected behavior. Google Chrome Frame will fetch URLs using the host browser's network stack, so the web site will send content intended for the host browser
So it looks they are only replacing the renderer and not the networking and other internal parts of IE, so it will behave remotely as a real IE, only that the content is displayed by the plugin. This is not a new idea, people tried to do it with Gecko, the advantage of WebKit is that the host (in this case IE) can provide a lot, instead Gecko is tightly tied to NetLib (The Mozilla Networking Library), NSPR (Netscape Portable Runtime), NSS (Network Security Services) so it was not practical as a plugin because it will be a complete browser inside IE
The only people I could see using this are people who aren't allowed to install / use a different web browser. And I highly doubt IT departments that don't allow third party browsers will allow this plugin to be installed. So this seems like a gigantic waste of time.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday September 22, @07:31PM (#29510493)
Boy, the people at Microsoft must be pissed about this. When Bill Gates "discovered" the internet back in 1994, the first thing he realized is that eventually people were going want to replace Microsoft desktop software with programs that run on the web.
So Microsoft's strategy ever since then has been cripple IE to keep that from happening. That's why IE innovation came to a screeching halt once IE crushed Netscape. And that's why IE runs javascript so poorly, it's not due to bad programing, it's a strategic decision.
Now Google comes up with a new technology, Wave, that out-performs a whole slew of desktop applications, and to help it out adds a plug-in that uncripples IE. What do you bet there will be an IE update in a few weeks that blocks it?
Why would Microsoft be pissed? This technology keeps people using their product so people have fewer reasons to migrate to another browser.
If Microsoft's strategy was to cripple IE, why did they implement a modular system that allowed third parties to add their own scripting languages and rendering plug-ins (which they introduced way back in Internet Explorer 3). If they tried to block their documented APIs like Active Scripting to spite Google, then they would be killing off all the other scripting languag
Their strategy wasn't to cripple IE. Their strategy was to leverage their domiant position so that smaller third parties could never get into the game, by not supporting stuff that didn't encourage developers to go 100% Microsoft.
Sure, you could have a plugin, but who wants to require ANOTHER plugin?
First, sneak your interface into the browser, then you could change the Windows desktop environment, then change the kernel and before you know it we're running 100% open source software.
This whole thing should be very embarrassing for Microsoft... but apparently it isn't. Microsoft is co-sponsoring a conference about SVG [ajaxian.com], which is being held in Google's Mountain View complex, of all places. That in itself is disturbing enough, but to think that the one company that's prevented SVG from gaining traction on the web is now pretending to be interested in SVG (as opposed to promoting their Silverlight tool as the only *real* solution) is, excuse me, fucked up.
If they really want to help the advancement of SVG, they should finally release a browser which implements it natively. Apparently every other browser vendor can do it. For IE, at the moment, we have to rely on a fragile JavaScript/Flash workaround [google.com] provided by Google.
I'm really not ranting about Microsoft just for the fun of it; I'm usually pragmatic, bordering on stoic. But I (like many others here) have spent weeks and months trying to work around Microsoft products' shortcomings, and this kind of hypocrisy is making me angry.
A lot of the fancy shit you see on the internet today is javascript, the reason much of it wasn't there before was because javascript was so damn intensive to execute. It's nothing like machine code, it's not even like repackaged interpreter language. Javascript is run straight from the script, and it is a terribly inefficient way to do things, but it is much easier to distribute along with HTML.
JS isn't exactly the future of all websites, but it's certainly easier to work with for light effects than flash.
I'll show you why you want JS to run better... go to ebay.com and press CTRL-F5 and count how long it takes to load. Then, disable Javascript execution and press CTRL-F5 again. I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
Slashdot.
Perhaps not as intensive as ebay.com, but without javascript enabled, Slashdot loads faster and generally works better. You could say it's "less filling".
I concur, but it's a depressing state that it should ever even be necessary to add to the work necessary to do less work in a realm where usability should be paramount.
Is there an ongoing "my Javascript is faster than yours ha-ha" competition in the browser market?
Uhm... Yes?
Javascript is the one client-side programming language that is always guaranteed to be there, on anything that can reasonably be called a browser. Anything that can be called a web application is probably at some point going to care about Javascript speed. And faster Javascript opens the door to some [google.com] things [sourceforge.net] you might not have thought were possible in a browser.
When looking for a browser, it isn't just speed people are looking for; They want security
Chrome runs each tab in a separate process, meaning it can theoretically sandbox each tab using standard OS techniques -- for example, on Linux, my Chromium does seem to be running things as an unprivileged user, and chrooting them out of the way.
Other browsers are playing catch-up.
add-ons, customization
The Chrome extension API isn't finished, but it's just Javascript and HTML. It's the kind of thing that a web developer could learn in an hour. It won't run Firefox extensions (yet), but it seems likely that it'll have plenty of extensions Firefox won't, just because of how much easier it is to get off the ground.
If I want top speed, I'll use chrome. If I want an all-around great browser, I'll use Firefox.
We don't care, this isn't about you. (And for what it's worth, Firefox is working hard to improve javascript, security, and reliability to match Chrome.)
This is about the 80% who still use IE, and about the rest of us not having to care anymore. I can build a web app that works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Epiphany, Galeon, Konqueror, Opera, in every browser, ever, with minimal effort -- figure an extra 5-10% development time to make it work on browsers other than the one I develop for. IE will fuck it up and add easily 20-50% to my development time.
Doing it this way means that at some point in the future, hopefully, something like YouTube will force IE users to either switch browsers or install this plugin -- at which point, I can forget that IE exists, and let it all melt away like a bad dream.
No, but funny you should mention it. The funny part is that Google is beating MS in their own game. They are actually improving the MS browser so that users can properly and smoothly use Google products, and when the user is tied in he will notice not only Google Wave, but also the Google Chrome banners or "suggestions", and later on Google Chrome OS. Instead of trying to act as the bigger predator as traditional software wars, they act as the symbiotic bacteria "infecting" the host. Today IE, tomorrow the world!
Seems to me that there is simply no room for anything else than genious inside Google, but perhaps I'm giving too much credit. Still -- well played Google, well played.
Instead of trying to act as the bigger predator as traditional software wars, they act as the symbiotic bacteria "infecting" the host.
I see your point, but at the same time, what Google is really doing in this case is applying Open Source models to a Closed Source application. One of the primary points of Open Source is you can see an application and modify it according to your whim, rather than having to depend on the originator.
Obviously, closed source makes this more difficult and provides limitations. So it's kind of a hybrid, using the plug-in model to go through a defined interface.
Makes you wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
...if Google is going to pull the embrace, extend and extinguish routine on Microsoft. I hope I live to see that day.
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
...if Google is going to pull the embrace, extend and extinguish routine on Microsoft. I hope I live to see that day.
Well, it should certainly be embarrassing for the IE development group at MS to have their Arch Nemesis add these features to their product. Chair throwing time? But what could be holding Microsoft back? It's not like they don't hire phd coders just like Google, both places are swimming in overachievers. Must be a management problem...
Parent
8 hours a week (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the 8 hours a week that really powers Google's innovation. For those who don't know, Google employees are supposed to dedicate 8 hours a week of company time to some personal project. Those 8 hours have been responsible for Docs, gMail, Maps, Earth, code search, scholar search, etc., etc. People have ideas, give your employees a chance to explore them a bit and you might be surprised what they come up with on their own.
Re:8 hours a week (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no.
Google Docs is based on two applications: Writely, by Upstartle, and XL2Web, by 2Web Technologies.
Google Earth was originally named Earth Viewer and it was created by Keyhole, inc.
Google Maps was created for the company Where 2 Technologies.
Code and Scholar search, in spite of being useful, are nothing more than variations of Google Search, so from that list only GMail was truly created at Google.
Parent
Re:8 hours a week (Score:4, Informative)
You and the GP appear to be mistaking Google Code Search [google.com] for Google Code [google.com].
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Must be a management problem...
Which management will investigate and decide that the only solution to is... more management.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually I find that often the solution is decided to be "less management". Hundreds of managers get fired.
But somehow in the end, we end up with more management, even though we have less managers.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft. Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
IE still has a very enterprise-oriented development cycle and not the bleeding edge feature explosion we see in most open source browsers.
I don't think IE needs to catch up so much as Microsoft simply needs to release an unstable browser in additio
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't really know what you're talking about here.
IE hasn't caught up to existing, published, finished standards- that's well before we even start talking about initial implementations of things from the in-progress HTML 5 standard. It's the worst browser in the bunch for CSS compatibility- with finished, published standards.
IE needs to play catch-up before it can even think about doing anything with HTML 5. They don't need an unstable browser fork; they just need to actually finish their standards implementations in the stable releases. They're getting better at it, definitely, but they've got a long way to go.
Parent
W3C Working Draft (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft.
In Firefox, this page [w3.org] shows "W3C Working Draft" along the left side.
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
A lot of the features that Acid3 tests aren't new proposals in any sense; they've been around for years. WebKit (basis for Chrome and Safari), Gecko (Firefox and SeaMonkey), and Presto (Opera) all score above 90/100, which handily beats IE 8's 20/100.
Parent
Re:W3C Working Draft (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not implying all of them are. IE is only supporting finished standards.
This might be a credible statement if Microsoft actually had a reasonable track record of supporting finished standards.
And if so many other organizations with notably smaller pools of resources hadn't managed to run circles around them over the last 5-7 years, not only supporting "unfinished" standards but doing a better job at implementing the finished ones.
Whatever is going on with IE can't be reasonably explained by stating that they're sticking with finished standards.
Between that and Microsoft's well-known history, one has to wonder why any intelligent person would actually even be able to forward that as an explanation of choice.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't say it supports all finished standards. That would be a bold claim. That's a fair criticism. I am simply saying that IE generally doesn't support not-yet-standardized "standards" features.
you mean like the <marquee> element?
Excuses, excuses... (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML 5 is not done yet by any means. I wouldn't even say they have what you might call a working draft.
"The publication of this document by the W3C as a W3C Working Draft ..." [w3.org].
(And the first public working draft was published Jan 2008).
Microsoft isn't necessarily behind so much as they are not working off the Mozilla and Apple webkit mailing lists when they implement features to their browser.
I don't work off these lists either, but I'm aware of a numer of high profile parts of it, say, the Canvas element. I'm sure Microsoft is too.
IE still has a very enterprise-oriented development cycle
Is this what we call their six year hiatus from actually working on their product?
In the late 1990s they showed they were quite capable of aggressively expanding IE's features, including new if raggedly incomplete support for emerging standards, when they decided it was in their interest to do it.
the bleeding edge feature explosion we see in most open source browsers.
A lot of the features discussed for HTML 5 have had visible implementations for 3-4 years. You could call them bleeding edge in 2006, maybe 2007. 2009? Not without looking pretty silly.
I don't think IE needs to catch up so much as Microsoft simply needs to release an unstable browser in addition to their platform browser if they want to compete with the rest of the non-standard "standards" cult.
The competing products seem to do just fine at keeping a comparable level of stability along with the pushing the envelope. In fact, given how much Opera, Mozilla, and Safari, have been able to do with resources that are orders of magnitude smaller, there's really no excuse.
Except of course if you're talking about CSS 2.1, where it is the best.
Can you defend this claim? Because based on my experiences *using* CSS over the last 7 years, there hasn't been a time when any version of IE could even claim they weren't maddeningly, brokenly worse.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Can you defend this claim? Because based on my experiences *using* CSS over the last 7 years, there hasn't been a time when any version of IE could even claim they weren't maddeningly, brokenly worse.
IE properly requires the tbody element when adding DOM tables to a document! :P
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Can you defend this claim?
As it happens, IE8's support for CSS2.1 is fairly good in the sense that everything that is clearly defined in the spec is in fact implemented, to my knowledge.
That does mean that things that are _not_ clearly defined might not be interoperable with other browsers. That's not exactly IE's fault; it's the spec's fault. The other browsers are not exactly interoperable with each other on those points either.
It also means that CSS features that are not in CSS2.1 (e.g. many of th
Re:Excuses, excuses... (Score:4, Insightful)
Popular doesn't mean standard. These are separate concepts. If it did, then every browser except for IE could be considered non-standard. Canvas is only popular within the enthusiast web developer clique, or "circle jerk" if you will.
Yes, what would those narcissistic onanist web developers know about the relevance of the canvas tag to creating... web applications?
Wow, since some snarky webtrash said it, it must be true.
I haven't gotten snarky yet, but perhaps I will when you explain what "webtrash" means. I certainly hope it's not your term for someone who actually has a working understanding of the issues we've been discussing.
I tend to use the test suites when referencing this:
http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-css?uas=IE7-IE8-FX3-OP9 [webdevout.net]
That's *awesome*. With IE 8, we can now say that after 8 years of lagging behind, the browser created by the world's richest software company marginally edges out Firefox 3 in a feature-by-feature comparison CSS 2.1 features! Gives you a surge of pride, right? Why, if it constituted the most commonly used version of the product, that'd almost be the same thing as giving the world back all the man-hours spent trying to work around the support that wasn't there until this year!
On a different topic, I'd be interested in your take on the relative importance in day-to-day terms of, say @page:left and reliable absolute positioning.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Very true indeed. Every time an enterprise upgrades their version of IE, everything in the enterprise dependent on IE stops working which means another cycle of development at the enterprise.
While it's true that many "enterprise" apps make use of ActiveX, it seems kind of stupid to design a Web app that depends on a spacific version of an application known to update every few years (like a browser).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Its on its way to Linux. Chromium has been stable for a couple of weeks so now here is a dev release of Chrome. Works very well on debian at least.
http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel [chromium.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well my user agent string right now is: (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/4.0.212.0 Safari/532.0), which says I'm running the latest Chrome very nicely on my Linux box.
If you are using Ubuntu, I suggest you give this PPA a try: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa [launchpad.net]
It's daily builds of Chromium. I've been running it now for a week, and it has not crashed on me a single time. There is a x86 version, as well as a AMD64 version, and the 64-bit ver
video of Ballmer hearing this news (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'd use this new browser to watch Steve's fit when hears google is subverting IE.
I'd would then like to see the video of Steve watching this video on IE and realising that it uses the HTML5 video tag and is in OGG Theora.
So, Basically.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So, Basically.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Prediction: when YouTube dumps Flash, the new 'YouTube installer' is this.
Parent
In other words, pretty much what everybody does (Score:4, Interesting)
Google are taking the matter into their own hands and actually putting resources towards improving IE, because they know that MS will not do it in any reasonable way.
Yeah, in other words, pretty much what everybody else has been doing over the last decade with their collection of hacks, their CSS reset sheets, and their javascript libraries.
One wonders what the cost of the lost productivity involved in working with the deliberately broken portions of Microsoft's software is... or how much more productive the industry as a whole would be if IE faded away...
Parent
Security? (Score:2, Interesting)
Last I checked, webkit browsers other than Chrome for Windows have some pretty hefty security holes and dire vulnerabilities. The question is whether google is dropping in a tiny webkit panel or a full chrome instance within this tab. Their implementation here is very important because they may end up simply shattering IE 8's security model and leaving an exploitable hole in users' systems.
Google better take this very seriously before advertising this on their search and mail pages, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
It's strictly "opt in" for web developers, so don't worry, for websites that don't explicitly request Google Chrome Frame, you'll keep the security you've come to expect from Microsoft!!!
(I know ANY website can request GCF to turn itself on but I just wanted to make that little joke.)
Re: (Score:2)
The plugin is intended as a workaround for IE6; I'm sure however this plugin is impletmented IE6 will end up being less buggy for it.
Re:Security? (Score:4, Informative)
From Chrome Frame Developer's Guide [google.com]:
Note: forcing websites into Google Chrome Frame with these techniques may lead to unexpected behavior. Google Chrome Frame will fetch URLs using the host browser's network stack, so the web site will send content intended for the host browser
So it looks they are only replacing the renderer and not the networking and other internal parts of IE, so it will behave remotely as a real IE, only that the content is displayed by the plugin. This is not a new idea, people tried to do it with Gecko, the advantage of WebKit is that the host (in this case IE) can provide a lot, instead Gecko is tightly tied to NetLib (The Mozilla Networking Library), NSPR (Netscape Portable Runtime), NSS (Network Security Services) so it was not practical as a plugin because it will be a complete browser inside IE
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't that still leave certain exploits open, though? The rendering engine itself does have some access to the system and memory model, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't stop now! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I see Google starting a new tag... "letmefixthatforyou"
Google's tactic is well known (Score:5, Funny)
First they ignore you..
Then they laugh at you...
Then you make plugins for their browser.
Re: (Score:2)
First they ignore you..
Then they laugh at you...
Then you make plugins for their browser.
It's like the three stages of high school relationships, isn't it? Ignore, laugh, plugin.
Google is my hero (Score:5, Funny)
Google is the wind beneath my wings.
new industry saying: (Score:3)
"IE isn't done till Frame won't run."
Is this just a programming exercise? (Score:2, Flamebait)
The only people I could see using this are people who aren't allowed to install / use a different web browser. And I highly doubt IT departments that don't allow third party browsers will allow this plugin to be installed. So this seems like a gigantic waste of time.
threat to Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Boy, the people at Microsoft must be pissed about this. When Bill Gates "discovered" the internet back in 1994, the first thing he realized is that eventually people were going want to replace Microsoft desktop software with programs that run on the web.
So Microsoft's strategy ever since then has been cripple IE to keep that from happening. That's why IE innovation came to a screeching halt once IE crushed Netscape. And that's why IE runs javascript so poorly, it's not due to bad programing, it's a strategic decision.
Now Google comes up with a new technology, Wave, that out-performs a whole slew of desktop applications, and to help it out adds a plug-in that uncripples IE. What do you bet there will be an IE update in a few weeks that blocks it?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why would Microsoft be pissed? This technology keeps people using their product so people have fewer reasons to migrate to another browser.
If Microsoft's strategy was to cripple IE, why did they implement a modular system that allowed third parties to add their own scripting languages and rendering plug-ins (which they introduced way back in Internet Explorer 3). If they tried to block their documented APIs like Active Scripting to spite Google, then they would be killing off all the other scripting languag
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Their strategy wasn't to cripple IE. Their strategy was to leverage their domiant position so that smaller third parties could never get into the game, by not supporting stuff that didn't encourage developers to go 100% Microsoft.
Sure, you could have a plugin, but who wants to require ANOTHER plugin?
What a good idea (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft schizophrenia (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole thing should be very embarrassing for Microsoft... but apparently it isn't. Microsoft is co-sponsoring a conference about SVG [ajaxian.com], which is being held in Google's Mountain View complex, of all places. That in itself is disturbing enough, but to think that the one company that's prevented SVG from gaining traction on the web is now pretending to be interested in SVG (as opposed to promoting their Silverlight tool as the only *real* solution) is, excuse me, fucked up.
If they really want to help the advancement of SVG, they should finally release a browser which implements it natively. Apparently every other browser vendor can do it. For IE, at the moment, we have to rely on a fragile JavaScript/Flash workaround [google.com] provided by Google.
I'm really not ranting about Microsoft just for the fun of it; I'm usually pragmatic, bordering on stoic. But I (like many others here) have spent weeks and months trying to work around Microsoft products' shortcomings, and this kind of hypocrisy is making me angry.
CJ
Re:Why... (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of the fancy shit you see on the internet today is javascript, the reason much of it wasn't there before was because javascript was so damn intensive to execute. It's nothing like machine code, it's not even like repackaged interpreter language. Javascript is run straight from the script, and it is a terribly inefficient way to do things, but it is much easier to distribute along with HTML.
JS isn't exactly the future of all websites, but it's certainly easier to work with for light effects than flash.
I'll show you why you want JS to run better... go to ebay.com and press CTRL-F5 and count how long it takes to load. Then, disable Javascript execution and press CTRL-F5 again. I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
Parent
Re:Why... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure someone else can suggest a more JS intensive site, but that's all I got right now.
Slashdot.
Perhaps not as intensive as ebay.com, but without javascript enabled, Slashdot loads faster and generally works better. You could say it's "less filling".
Parent
Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
Adblock+ and NoScript is win :)
I concur, but it's a depressing state that it should ever even be necessary to add to the work necessary to do less work in a realm where usability should be paramount.
Parent
Re:Why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there an ongoing "my Javascript is faster than yours ha-ha" competition in the browser market?
Uhm... Yes?
Javascript is the one client-side programming language that is always guaranteed to be there, on anything that can reasonably be called a browser. Anything that can be called a web application is probably at some point going to care about Javascript speed. And faster Javascript opens the door to some [google.com] things [sourceforge.net] you might not have thought were possible in a browser.
When looking for a browser, it isn't just speed people are looking for; They want security
Chrome runs each tab in a separate process, meaning it can theoretically sandbox each tab using standard OS techniques -- for example, on Linux, my Chromium does seem to be running things as an unprivileged user, and chrooting them out of the way.
Other browsers are playing catch-up.
add-ons, customization
The Chrome extension API isn't finished, but it's just Javascript and HTML. It's the kind of thing that a web developer could learn in an hour. It won't run Firefox extensions (yet), but it seems likely that it'll have plenty of extensions Firefox won't, just because of how much easier it is to get off the ground.
If I want top speed, I'll use chrome. If I want an all-around great browser, I'll use Firefox.
We don't care, this isn't about you. (And for what it's worth, Firefox is working hard to improve javascript, security, and reliability to match Chrome.)
This is about the 80% who still use IE, and about the rest of us not having to care anymore. I can build a web app that works in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Epiphany, Galeon, Konqueror, Opera, in every browser, ever, with minimal effort -- figure an extra 5-10% development time to make it work on browsers other than the one I develop for. IE will fuck it up and add easily 20-50% to my development time.
Doing it this way means that at some point in the future, hopefully, something like YouTube will force IE users to either switch browsers or install this plugin -- at which point, I can forget that IE exists, and let it all melt away like a bad dream.
Parent
Re:Do I still have to use Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
and IE?
No, but funny you should mention it. The funny part is that Google is beating MS in their own game. They are actually improving the MS browser so that users can properly and smoothly use Google products, and when the user is tied in he will notice not only Google Wave, but also the Google Chrome banners or "suggestions", and later on Google Chrome OS. Instead of trying to act as the bigger predator as traditional software wars, they act as the symbiotic bacteria "infecting" the host. Today IE, tomorrow the world!
Seems to me that there is simply no room for anything else than genious inside Google, but perhaps I'm giving too much credit. Still -- well played Google, well played.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Instead of trying to act as the bigger predator as traditional software wars, they act as the symbiotic bacteria "infecting" the host.
I see your point, but at the same time, what Google is really doing in this case is applying Open Source models to a Closed Source application. One of the primary points of Open Source is you can see an application and modify it according to your whim, rather than having to depend on the originator.
Obviously, closed source makes this more difficult and provides limitations. So it's kind of a hybrid, using the plug-in model to go through a defined interface.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
i guess some of us haven't been paying attention.
No, you're right. I guess some of us haven't.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"This is Google's shots across the bowel."
Eeewww.....