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.'"
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: Those fucking bastards are probably going to do the same thing to Firefox!!!! Chair... Google... Must... throw...
sour grapes (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like sour grapes to me. Google has a technically superior engine, and Mozilla's whining about it. Well boo-hoo guys, how about cutting the crap and getting to work improving your product?
If you really develop webapps IE8 is still useless (Score:5, Insightful)
IE8 doesn't support canvas, or svg, doesn't have a real javascript engine, and still mangles standard css.
It can get by on simple web pages, but it's simply not suitable for real web apps. Anyone developing one either writes off IE completely, or is using the tools that Google's been releasing to augment IE's deficiencies.
Well, then Mozilla... (Score:2, Insightful)
No offense to Firefox... (Score:5, Insightful)
... because I love and use it daily. But isn't Firefox 'plug-in soup'? Updates frequently breaking plugins, plugins sometimes breaking the browser, etc.
Seems silly to me for them to make a comment like this.
They hate our freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
More options are good. There are many users who are forced to keep IE6 for work access to intranet sites and yet may want Google wave for personal use. This way they can access all their sites without having to remember which browser is for which and deal with different sets of bookmarks and cookies. What alternatives do Microsoft and Mozilla foundation propose for this group of people?
Re:Important point (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that a good thing? I'm a web developer--and I'll say outright--I don't deserve control of your browser. The marketing tools that we had do our frontpage came up with a *beautiful* flash application--and the boss was absolutely heartbroken when he couldn't show our new page to somebody he met in the lobby of a motel. And most of what they did in flash would have rendered faster with a bit of CSS and tiny bit of javascript.
I warned him---but pretty shiny things overcame technical sense. More fragmentation of the browser market is a *good* thing, as it will make further development of new shiny toys impossible (and economically unrewarding) until people actually FIX THE FUCKING STANDARDS. That's right--I said it--HTML is broken. Embedded video in a page is more about fucking politics than good technical sense--fuck you too apple and google for everything you had to do with that.
Break the entire web, raze the platforms, make Microsoft impossible to develop for when their market share gets pushed down to 30%. Bring back the days of hacking different tables together, the CSS kluges in comment fields, javascript expressions detecting browsers, and the current abomination that is the ridiculous engine-creep in User-Agent strings.
Make web developers like myself weep with frustration and push for real standards.
But when it's all done, can we please get an open standard out of it (unlike Acid2), with a protected term (sort of like how CDROM is owned by sony) owned and registered by a governing body that certifies a browser engine as either implementing it or not?, and as part of the standard, have a "standards only" mode required--wherein no new tags may be rendered or acted upon?
So finally, IE can't be called a "web browser" by definition if it doesn't pass "ACID VERSION 5.897879 Test 1083b".
Then, and only then will the web actually be a reasonable platform to work on. Because as it is today--I look forward to fragmentation, since it would at least make all those lazy "web programmers" out there pay attention to the tags they're using.
Standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
If everyone would just follow the goddamned standards then we wouldn't have to worry about this shit. Yes I'm blaming all parties involved here, they are all either directly responsible, or too complacent.
Reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Dudes... I work at a company whose standard is IE6. Not IE7, not IE8. IE6. And IE6 isn't even compatible with IE8 in some cases.
The reason Google is releasing Chrome Frame is very simple--so that they can get Google Wave in the door of enterprises who have standardized on IE (including IE6) without having to develop 4 different versions of it (Standards Compliant, IE6, IE7, and IE8). They decided that doing Chrome Frame was easier, cheaper, and better for the future of Google Apps (broadly construed to include Wave) than continuing to pander to IE.
I don't think they want to "enable" IE users... but they'd rather enable IE users to continue to be stupid than cripple their applications as they've been doing ever since gmail came out. From Google's point of view, this is ALL about the apps, not the browser wars.
Re:IE (Score:3, Insightful)
No purpose? Many IE users won't change the browser but they would install all kind of crappy add ons. This add on doesn't even change the interface while most of the addons do.
ad- and script-blockers are essential Re:IE (Score:2, Insightful)
Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites (AdBlock Plus and NoScript may be desirable, but not necessary).
They are if you browse in certain wild-west not-so-professionally-managed portions of the web!
Re:IE (Score:4, Insightful)
Asides from the sites that only render properly in IE due to poor authoring, there are still sites out there that will actively forbid you from viewing them unless you are using IE. Unfortunately, once in a blue moon I have to visit them. That's why I have the Firefox add-on IE Tab [mozilla.org], which pretty much does the same thing as this Chrome Frame thing. Or am I somehow mistaken?
Re:If you really develop webapps IE8 is still usel (Score:1, Insightful)
Spoken like a true unemployed elitist fool.
From a developer who is employed's stand point. If X percentage of my potential user base uses a browser then I make sure it works on that browser. That is why EVERY MAJOR WEB SITE ON THE WEB supports IE6, 7 and 8 in addition to a giant host of other browsers.
Re:Important point (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you get from "This is a new thing and you have to do special stuff to get it to work for you" to "This doesn't cause anymore fragmentation than before"? Having new things you have to code for is the very definition of fragmentation, and adding a new type of browser that specifically requires extra code and could easily gain a significant usermarket is a step towards more fragmentation, not less.
Just because you can code for it or leave it out doesn't mean it doesn't cause fragmentation. You can leave out IE8 code and just code for Mozilla to save fragmentation, but that's not a possibility for most web developers. As soon as Frame becomes popular it'll end up being yet another special case on the list of things you need to write extra code for, and that's a bad thing for a company that's supposed to be about embracing standards.
"browser-in-a-browser will confuse users" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"loss of control?" (Score:3, Insightful)
I kind of like it resting with me. My browser, my control.
I'm also not all that broken up about it being harder to "manage" information across sessions.
Re:Important point (Score:5, Insightful)
What he means is Frame doesn't activate unless the website asks for this (or, theoretically the user but I can't see that option being so popular if the site works anyway).
So there's no extra work. If you don't want to support chrome then don't.. nothing has changed.
Google Frame (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been thinking about Google Frame. Honestly, I think it's too good a stopgap. Let me explain:
People have Internet Explorer. It sucks. Or people have Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Safari/... and they all work the same (almost).
People who have IE are mostly unable or unwilling to install, well, anything else.
Chrome is good in that installing a browser plugin is easier (and more familiar) for most people than installing a browser. They do it all the time - Flash, Java, SuperPornSearch - even if they shouldn't.
So Chrome Frame is nice, in that regard, in that I as a web developer can have IE say "install this to view this page", or otherwise throw up a "You must have at least Flash 7 to view this content"-type page. Those errors seem to be effective, for the most part.
But it's bad in the sense that if everybody requires Chrome Frame, and everybody has it, that's dandy. But it's still running IE.
In short, it's a stopgap. But it's a very good stopgap. Potentially so good that people won't switch to a real browser. And that's bad.
Re:Important point (Score:3, Insightful)
As soon as Frame becomes popular it'll end up being yet another special case on the list of things you need to write extra code for, and that's a bad thing for a company that's supposed to be about embracing standards.
Well you do not really need any other extra things for Frame other than the metatag - which you can happily avoid and have the IE users use IE's rendering engine if you want so. Frame's engine is basically same as Chrome's and you're definitely not avoiding that either.
That being said I dont see a need to add the metatag to my sites. But if I did, I know it wouldn't really require more from me than that since I already have to support Chrome anyway. So it doesn't cause any fragmention.
Browser-in-a-browser (Score:2, Insightful)
Baker says Chrome Frame's browser-in-a-browser will confuse users and render some of their familiar tools useless.
Kinda like IETab in Firefox?
Re:IE (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not mistaken. But it demonstrates the exact problems I mentioned. When viewing sites in IE Tab, you lose all the Firefox functionality below the level of tab separation. You need plugins for each, the behavior of different tabs doesn't match (I hate losing find-as-you-type for instance), etc.
And like I noted before, the IE Tab users (usually) know what they are getting into; they have to explicitly opt in on each site. The Chrome Frame users won't be aware, as they would include a large percentage of the entire Google user base. And they don't control which sites use it; the web authors who do the blind copy'n'paste I mentioned will make the decision. It's annoying enough to lose functionality when I visit a site in IE Tab. It would be worse to experience it randomly as I browse.
Re:Pot, kettle, black, Mozilla. Tsk, tsk. (Score:2, Insightful)
IIRC Trident parses any "tag", HTML5 was designed around the behaviour of existing real world browsers like IE. I do canvas in XHTML 1.0 strict by extending the DTD.
Screaming Monkey would replace Microsoft's JScript bringing with it a standards compliant DOM and increased performance (via nanojit).
All Mozilla are saying is that Google's approach (the entire browser as a plugin) has poor integration with the existing IE shell, that's not a hypocritical position at all. Both organisations have, to their credit, invested time in producing turd polish to bring the modern web to organizations stuck with MSIE.
huh? Where's the market? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anybody who is using IE6 is either so clueless that they wouldn't know about this plugin, or they are forced to use IE6 because certain websites are coded for it. Either way it seems more like a fun stunt than anything viable.
I do all my work web surfing on firefox, but when I need to do one of my many yearly training courses, I have to fire up IE6 because the courses break in weird ways with firefox. So the only reason I'm in IE is that I'm forced to be, and this plugin would break the very reason I'm in IE in the first place.
Sheldon
Re:Google Frame (Score:4, Insightful)
If everyone has chrome frame it won't matter - IE becomes merely a UI around it, hence no more relevant to the 'browser wars' than whether they have Aero switched on or not. People can code to standards and expect it to work, at last.
If gmail starts to require frame that'll be a huge number of users suddenly using it.. if they do the same to youtube (ditch the flash and use canvas instead) then its numbers will skyrocket. There's nothing stopping google doing either of these things.
Re:Well, then Mozilla... (Score:4, Insightful)
And not a moment too soon, because Flash sucks ass.
The only thing I use it for is embedding video. Groovy menus? AJAX and CSS. Flash was a great idea when we all had dial up. We've moved on from there, and we all learned not to build flash based splash pages. This makes Flash a fairly useless application. I look forward to it dying, like its bloated predecessor, Director.
Re:If you really develop webapps IE8 is still usel (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone developing one either writes off IE completely, or is using the tools that Google's been releasing to augment IE's deficiencies.
Really, those are our 2 options? Either don't support IE, or use something from Google. Oddly enough, I've been getting by for years without doing either of those. Granted, my "real web apps" don't need canvas or SVG. The vast majority of mature Javascript libraries around have no problems supporting IE with the vast majority of their functionality, what's your excuse? I've been supporting tens of thousands of corporate (read IE) users who spend hours each day using large ajax applications that I've built. I've got an installation with over 70,000 users on it where about 1% of the front-end code is HTML, and the rest is Javascript and CSS. IE8 runs that application just fine.
Re:IE (Score:3, Insightful)
It might help to convince management to bring things up to date, too: you can get incremental benefits from incremental improvement, rather than having to commit to overhauling the entire universe in one go.
I think this is an excellent point. GF will likely be deployed by enterprises as a way of migrating their intranet crap off IE6 (without having to incur the pain of hacking in IE6 support or training users to use multiple browsers).
As an enduser technology, Frame is worse than useless. (Sites shouldn't be encouraging users to install plugins because most of them are malware.)
Re:IE (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies that are still using IE6 are probably not going to let their users install things like this. In fact, they are probably likely to ban it due to some misinformation.
Re:IE (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention sloppy webmasters start depending on it rather than properly implementing their site. I remember one site trumpeting loudly "Now! Firefox support!! Click here for instructions!" and it was simply installing IETab and using it.
Re:Important point (Score:3, Insightful)
No, thats just totally wrong. Instead of yet another spec to code for, now you can code to the standard, and expect most people to be able to view it correctly. Why code for IE6, IE7, IE8, and "all the rest of the world"? Code HTMl5 and CSS3, and let it just work the way its supposed to. This is, I think, what is actually scaring MS. Google's plugin makes it possible for the majority of the web to ignore MS specs and use standards, transparently. You know how developers are going to respond to this. Its like Christmas and Thanksgiving all at the same time.
Re:Important point (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it reduces fragmentation. Look at it this way:
-You are a webmaster.
-You have a website that works in IE.
Result: No further action required. No fragmentation.
-You are a webmaster.
-You are coding a fancy DOM website, and need to implement ugly hacks to get it to work in IE.
-It's too difficult. You site has too many great features, like a Canvas banner.
-You either create a page educating users on the benefits of other browsers...
-Or you check for Chrome Frame, and if it isn't there, give them a button to install it. It's just another plugin like flash, right? People will for sure click on that.
Result: More fragmentation, but you save yourself effort, and are less likely to piss off IE lovers that refuse to use another browser.
Seems like a win win to me!
Re:About time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IE (Score:2, Insightful)
Except Firefox addons are not *necessary* to use any commonly accessed websites (AdBlock Plus and NoScript may be desirable, but not necessary).
Er, Flash? I'd say websites that are Flash-based or contain fairly large amounts of Flash content are "common"...
Re:Important point (Score:4, Insightful)
So no changes there.
The only reason I might want to add an meta X-UA-Compatible='chrome=1' (or whatever it is) is if I wanted to (a). allow IE users with CF installed a snappier browsing experience, or (b). I wanted to make use of features that only exist in modern browsers such as canvas or SVG or something.
It's clear that Googles intent here is (b) in the above list, since they're the ones really pushing the limits of what is possible using currently available web-standards.... and by that, I mean what is possible with IE since IE is still the browser with market share.
So.... from a web developers perspective, I can do nothing at all, and this doesn't affect me, or I can think about it a bit, continue building as I do, but add an X-UA-Compatible response-header/meta. I really really ain't that difficult IMHO!!
Just to recap on Google's motivation here; it *isn't* about killing off IE6/7 (like most people seemed to think), but is about *all* versions of IE since not even IE8 supports bleeding edge functionality. All versions of IE are hindering the Google vision of web apps (think Google Wave here in particular), although Google Docs is kind of key here too.
I think Google are preempting MS's response to Google web apps; in order for MS to transition MS Office to Office Web-apps (or whatever they're calling it), it seems entirely likely they'll push Silverlight. Sooooo, without Chrome-Frame, Google would have no answer to this, and darkness would once again descend upon the web!! [I _might_ be being overly dramatic!]
Since it's relevant, I imagine that Win7 will ship with Silverlight installed and I imagine it will run regardless of which browser the user chooses. So hopefully, you can see the problem!
Blackboard (Score:2, Insightful)
Many universities use this POS.
http://www.blackboard.com/ [blackboard.com]
Its a user-unfriendly mish-mash of forums, teacher news posts, file transfer, PM, and file upload functionality. It could entirely be duplicated using existing open source softwares in a superior manner if someone tied together a whole suite of apps and unified the interface. All I know is I can normally trust a website to be able to Attach A File in most any browser, I thought we had that one licked back in 98.
Of course my School isn't even Worried about Firefox...
Internet Explorer 8 has not been certified to be compatible with Blackboard. Be aware you may run into issues using IE 8 with Blackboard. Using the IE 8 compatibility view may help. Click this link for more information... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956197/LN/ [microsoft.com] For information on how to revert back to IE 7, click this link... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700 [microsoft.com]