Google Brings Chrome Renderer, Speedy Javascript To IE 239
A month after we discussed Google's bringing SVG to IE, several readers let us know that Google is expanding the beachhead by offering Chrome's renderer and speedy Javascript execution in an IE plugin. This effort is in service of allowing IE to participate in Google Wave when that technology's preview is extended in a week's time. The plugin, currently in an early stage of development, is called Google Chrome Frame.
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.
So, Basically.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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: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...
Re:Interesting (Score:1, Interesting)
ballmer doesn't care. ms wants to ditch ie for the most part. i guess some of us haven't been paying attention.
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.
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".
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?
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...
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
It plays out like a Greek myth (Score:2, Interesting)
This is Google at its best, IE is the lowers common denominator when it comes to browsers and Microsoft knows it.
Microsoft is not fixing IE to slow Google down in the WebApp space.
This is Google's shots across the bowel. Basically fix Microsoft or we will.
Chrome was shot one, develop a browser that's half done.
That does the things IE can not do, speed and standards.
This is shot two, A plugin which users hate installing, I need a plugin to use Google Wave? How come I don't need it with Firefox,Chrome,etc?
I bet this will be heavy on Google branding just to rub it in.
Shot three ChromeOS, This is just to piss off Microsoft, Google is becoming Microsoft to beat Microsoft, A one stop solution for software and the OS is just the perfectly integrated tool.(I know this was announced before the plugin)
Google are stepping on all of Microsoft's toes, browser, mail, OS, Office.
It's the marketing war of the century and Google hates Microsoft, the only other company I have seen with a blind hatred of Microsoft was Sun, but Google could win.
Google is the Do No Evil, relaxed, community giving, freebie galore, cool web tools company.
While Microsoft is the stuffy, evil empire,broken software,lax security,uninventive company.
Microsoft took out IBM and Google will take out Microsoft (offcourse they will live on is some form or another, but a shadow of their former self's)
Microsoft is the new IBM big, blotted, slow thinking, and Google is the new Microsoft a small company with inventive ideas.
Google will become the next evil empire and in 15 years Google will be on the road to a slow death at the hand on a new company.
It plays out like a Greek myth, The father will kill the son and so on.....
Re:Excuses, excuses... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's old, not having OP10 okay, but missing Firefox 3.5...
There just a few things I tested, which aren't working in Firefox 3, were implemented during Firefox 3.1 (later 3.5).
I Like to see a comparison between those 2 (IE8 vs Firefox 3.5). And adding some chrome version or Safari 3 / 4 would be nice too.
using Webdevout doesn't make any sense, you could as well compare Firefox 3 to IE7, both are 1 version older than the latest...
Re:Excuses, excuses... (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 the CSS3 Selectors features) are not supported in IE8.