Most modern web browsers support HTML5, a standard that allows web sites to have features that previously only desktop applications had. Also most modern web applications use heavy javascript code to create the functionality of the site. Unfortunately Internet Explorer isn’t supporting HTML5 yet. And developers can’t ignore this, because IE is used by a large number of users. So most often developers need to use all kinds of hacks, workarounds and tricks to make their application work on IE as it should be.
But no more. Google announced today that it would release an Internet Explorer plugin called Google Chrome Frame that will allow developers to take advantage of the new technologies like HTML5 and modern CSS layout handling. And this inside Internet Explorer.
Developers will be able to place a small javascript code that detects if the user has the plugin and if not prompts him to install it. Sure not all users will install it, but in any case more of them will install the plugin if they can get away with this instead of replacing their browser. And if they really want to use a good website then they will install it. Especially if the install is easy and straightforward as Google products are. After installing the plugin it can be easily tested adding cf: in front of any url typed into Internet Explorer.
As for developers they only need to place a html tag into their application:
<meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“chrome=1”>
This will force IE to use the Webkit based Google Chrome rendering engine from the Google Chrome Frame. This way developers are fully in control to force IE to use or not to use the rendering engine so existing websites won’t break on this. Other browsers will simply disregard this tag and render the page as normal.
This is a really smart move from Google. They don’t ignore IE because they can’t do that, and they can’t do anything to force Microsoft to move on this matter because Microsoft prefers it this way. Except they did the only thing that will force Microsoft to react. They started to improve Internet Explorer.
Laszlo Bodor
