Mozilla Slams Chrome Frame As "Browser Soup" 236
CWmike writes "Mozilla executives today took shots at Google for pitching its Chrome Frame plug-in as a solution to Internet Explorer's poor performance, with one arguing that Google's move will result in 'browser soup.' The Mozilla reaction puts the company that builds Firefox on the same side of the debate as rival Microsoft, which has also blasted Google over the plug-in. Mitchell Baker, the former CEO of Mozilla and currently the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, said in a blog post, 'The overall effects of Chrome Frame are undesirable. I predict positive results will not be enduring and — and to the extent it is adopted — Chrome Frame will end in growing fragmentation and loss of control for most of us, including Web developers.' Baker says Chrome Frame's browser-in-a-browser will confuse users and render some of their familiar tools useless. 'Once your browser has fragmented into multiple rendering engines, it's very hard to manage information across Web sites. Some information will be manageable from the browser you use and some information from Chrome Frame. This defeats one of the most important ways in which a browser can help people manage their [Web] experience.'"
Re:Important point (Score:5, Informative)
The usage of Chrome Frame is up to the webmaster - you define it in a metatag. Even more so it sends the Chrome useragent then, so you can apply your hacks like normal.
This doesn't cost any more fragmention than before.
Re:IE (Score:5, Informative)
Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites (AdBlock Plus and NoScript may be desirable, but not necessary). As such, the people who install them are expected to be aware of potential incompatibility and can disable them if needed (for example, if AdBlock Plus blocks critical elements of a site, you can whitelist the necessary element, or just disable it on the specified site). The required knowledge level to install an addon usually means they know the basic troubleshooting needed to fix addon related problems.
If Google decides that a large number of its services require Chrome Frame, people without the necessary knowledge will be installing it to use those services. And unlike the Firefox addon users, most of them won't be competent enough to troubleshoot any problems that arise from the combined renderer, or even understand the source of the problem.
In addition, it would not surprise me to see a number of sites add the metatag without realizing the implications. Too many web developers are hacks, copying any pasting random junk from forums, reading tips out of guidebooks without understanding the context, etc. If their site's JavaScript is too slow, and a forum post says "Add this metatag to improve JavaScript performance," they'll add it without checking to see if their page is Chrome compatible.
Actual Mozilla blog posts (Score:5, Informative)
Urgh, I hate these links to useless tech news websites, rather than the original sources. To see what the Mozilla executives in question actually had to say, with their words in context, read Mitchell Baker: Browser Soup and Chrome Frame [lizardwrangler.com] and Mike Shaver: thoughts on chrome frame [off.net].
And as a bonus, from a Mozilla-technology using developer (I don't think he's affiliated with Mozilla in any official capacity anymore) Daniel Glazman: Google Chrome Frame [glazman.org].
Re:No offense to Firefox... (Score:4, Informative)
Add-ons for Firefox are much more restricted than they used to be, and as a result are (usually) more stable. And since they are supposed to state versions supported, they usually deactivate cleanly for untested versions of Firefox. As for real plugins, aside from one or two major releases (none in the last year) I've rarely seen a plugin that didn't work identically after upgrade. Most browsers have some plugin compatibility problems after a major release.
The plugin soup is more of a problem if the browser behaves drastically differently as a result of the plugin. With Chrome Frame, most plugins for IE will not work with a page rendered in the Chrome Frame. Multiple copies of the plugin would need to be installed (e.g. Flash), or certain functionality that was only implemented for one browser would not be available in one or the other (e.g. some random third party text box spell checker).
Re:sour grapes (Score:3, Informative)
Stupid thing is.. they *did* think of it first, but didn't get their plugin released in time.
http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/08/mozilla-drags-ie-into-the-future-with-canvas-element-plugin.ars [arstechnica.com]
Re:If you really develop webapps IE8 is still usel (Score:3, Informative)
The fourth most visited website [mashable.com] is generally considered to be a major website, and it has dropped support for IE6 [sitepoint.com].
I don't break functionality of IE6 sites, but if the off by three bug shows up on IE6 whatever, It's an old browser,and people that use it, like the people that use Netscape 4 don't really expect the web to work completely correct.
Re:If you really develop webapps IE8 is still usel (Score:3, Informative)
My company no longer requires me to write to IE6. In fact they don't even care if it fails gracefully in IE6. I however tend to make sure my sites fail gracefully even if javascript and css are not functioning properly.
Our internal websites are different, they have to work in IE7/IE8 but do not have to be perfect. For example, one site had nice rounded corners that everyone loved. However the method I was using was not implemented in IE yet (It's a safari/firefox thing). I could of been forced to write javascript to do this in IE. But instead we just decided it wasn't worth it.
Another example is a long running report we have. It takes a long time to get the data. To improve the feel of the report I rewrote it be dynamic and have sortable columns and real time updates to options (year, etc). Firefox and safari handle this wonderfully. IE7 and IE8 simply barf on the amount of data. It can take minutes to refresh. Some of the sorting simply crashes the browser completely. It was decided to just remove the crashing features from IE and put a disclaimer about the sort time. No point in trying to figure out how to speed it up when it works almost instantly in firefox/safari.