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Web Developers Rejoice Over Google's Chrome Frame For IE
By Giorgos Kontopoulos
Expert Author
Article Date: 2009-09-28
Google announced on tuesday 22nd of September 2009 the test release of Google Chrome Frame which is a plugin for IE that will make it HTML5 compliant. The need came out of their effort to build the next communication tools (google wave) and they wanted to make life easier for their developers to accommodate IE that still has the lion share of the internet users.
This is great news for developers in general as the plugin will be freely distributed and it promises to make the life of developers a lot easier but … 2 days later a microsoft spokesperson comes out and blasts Google Chrome Frame as potential dangerous security risk (as if IE is the safer browser on the internet … quite the opposite) … will the internet users install it once it comes out … and will the life of the developer be indeed easier … it remains to be seen …
The problems with IE and how they don't support the standards most modern browser support are pretty much known to advanced internet users. Especially web developers have to struggle endless hours to make their designs fit the "standards" of each different IE flavor. Yes each IE that comes out has its own quirks (take a look at http://www.quirksmode.org/compatibility.html to find out how compatible is your version of Internet explorer). The fact that IE6 was preinstalled onWIN XP systems has made it the "browser of choice" for many internet users who don't know what a web browser is … windows 7 (the successor of Vista) will ship in Europe without a browser installed according to this article but, the fact remains that as of today some 50% of the internet users use IE for their browsing. Its hard not consider it when designing/developing a site. When developing a site a lot of time is wasted on making sure each and every browser sees it the same way and that includes seperate tests for IE6, IE7 and IE8 and in google's own words.
Developers can't afford to ignore IE - most people use some version of IE - so they end up spending lots of time implementing work-arounds or limiting the functionality of their apps.
hopefully either IE developers come out finally with a standards compliant browser or IE users don't buy into the Microsoft claims and install the plugin …
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About the Author:
Giorgos Kontopoulos is a web consultant from Greece. He is one of the authors of GeoLand.org where he can often be found blogging about issues related to web development and search engine optimization.
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