REALTIME IT NEWS
REALTIME IT NEWS
Newsletters Select newsletters below and click the button to sign up!
Internetnews BloggersRecent Entries
ArchivesMonthly ArchivesSearch The Blog
« Report: Carrier Ethernet market to hit $34 billion in 2013 |
Sean Michael Kerner Blog
| Why the Smart Grid will be more secure than the regular grid »
Mozilla opposes Google Chrome Frame. No soup for you. From the 'Mozilla Agreeing with Microsoft' files:
Microsoft and Mozilla are two organizations that tend not to agree on many different topics. When it comes to Google's Chrome Frame, it's a different story. Mitchell Baker Chair of the Mozilla Foundation has come out swinging against Chrome Frame, which is a plug-in for Microsoft's Internet Explorer providing Google Chrome rendering technology. Microsoft has said that Chrome Frame isn't a good thing and Mozilla's Baker sees it as leading to further browser fragmentation as well. Baker sees Chrome Frame leading to a 'browser soup' where users (and developers to some extent) are using a 'soup' of browser components which could lead to control and potential security issues. "I predict positive results will not be enduring 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 blogged.Among the concerns that Baker has is how passwords, security settings, personalization, tagging and bookmarking will be handled across the Chrome Frame/IE hybrid. In her view, due to the fact that various parts of the browser are no longer connected, it's not clear that actions made in IE will have the same results if the user is using Chrome frame, which is essentially a browser-within-a-browser. "Once your browser has fragmented into multiple rendering engines, it's very hard to manage information across websites," Baker said. "Some information will be manageable from the browser you use and some information from Chrome Frame." Certainly Baker's concerns are legitimate, but isn't the issue the same as the one that developers (and users) face, with other plug-ins and add-ons? The real issue here is control. That is, Mozilla (and Microsoft) want the browser vendor to be in control. The Google Chrome Frame approach is an opposing view in some respects, where the developer gets control (if the user has the plug-in) by forcing the user to have a site render using Chrome Frame. Baker warns that other developers could see value in Google's approach which could lead to browser-within-a-browser plug-ins for other sites and services. That would lead to more complexity and potential security issues. "The result is a sort of browser-soup, where a given user action serves up some sort of response, but it's not clear what the result will be: are my passwords and history stored in chrome frame? some other variant? in what I think of as "my" browser?" Baker said. "This makes the web less knowable, less understandable, and certainly less manageable." 0 TrackBacksListed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Mozilla opposes Google Chrome Frame. No soup for you.. TrackBack URL for this entry: https://swarm.jupitermedia.com/mt-tb.cgi/8994 6 CommentsLeave a comment |
||
Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints, Permissions, Privacy Policy.
Advertise | Newsletters | Shopping | E-mail Offers | Freelance Jobs 
Digg
Del.icio.us
furl
StumbleUpon
BlinkList
Newsvine
Magnolia
Facebook
Tailrank
Slashdot
Technorati
Google
Bookmarks
Yahoo
Favorites
Windows
Live
Ask
Installing a modern web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera) is certainly the preferred solution, but Google Chrome Frame helps to address cases where:
1. Company apps/sites are dependent on IE and those companies don't allow any other browser to be installed.
2. People are too computer phobic/illiterate, to attempt a browser install.
3. People like IE, but they also would like to conform to web standards & support the latest web technologies.
To me, the advantages of having Google Chrome Frame available to install, in these cases, FAR outweigh any disadvantages it could introduce.
i really don't care what mozilla, MS or anyone else thinks... give me the "OPTION" of installing it.. the same way i have the option to install any other plug-in...
it is MY machine..
and since i run linux.. it is under MY control.. and I control what is installed... not what mozilla thinks is or isn't safe..
im not a big fan of google.. since they treat linux like a very second class citizen.. but regardless of that.. i make my own choices..
I get Mozilla is scared Google will make a chrome extension for Firefox....
There's two things that are never going to happen. Microsoft supporting web standards or finding an average Windows user smart enough to install an alternative browser.
Google Wave will be the shiznit and if MS doesn't want to support current web standards let alone HTML 5.0 then this is what they get.
The Chrome frame is way more helpful with IE than it is with Firefox. IE 6,7,8 have significant cross-compatibility issues, which is Google's reason for coming out with the Chrome frame idea. They are also probably trying to compete in the browser world as well, maybe hoping to lure users to using Chrome instead of IE. However, in the case of Firefox, it doesn't have cross-compatibility issues between versions. So what's the point of having Chrome in Firefox? It doesn't seem to have any functional benefit.
Its all about Google and wanting to push HTML 5 so they can beef up their web apps. I think its great for the consumer because the others just want to drag their feet and MS just wants control of the market. Google is trying to push the market but do so without locking in control. Any of the others can combat Google by simply stepping up their game. Google isn't making some proprietary interaction between Chome and a website...its all open standards.
Mozilla and MS really should just shut up about it. Its a plugin like any other plugin including the IE plugin for Firefox which I didn't see them complaining about. If the browser vendors don't want to keep up with the standards fast enough and Google is offering a way to do it then either shut up and let them or get up to speed on the emerging standards.
Petem,
My concern is exactly the opposite - the user losing control. I use Firefox on Gnu/Linux. I do not want to go to a website and have it tell me that I have to use Chrome to render a page that would work fine in my browser. Even those in-browser AJAX games that Google had the competition for (to show off their Javascript performance) were usable in IE, even if they were slower.
It is hard to see a functional benefit in requiring a user to view your page in a browser within a browser. By all means, encourage people to use standards-compliant, decent browsers like Firefox or Chrome, but give people the choice. If people want to use IE, or are too apathetic to want to change, let them and don't make the choice for them.
What this really does, as some have alluded to, is move control from the user to the web-page designer. In the same way that I used to get upset when I would go to a page with an up-to-date Firefox 0.9 and be told that I needed "at least IE6", I don't think developers should tell me what to do. It is no coincidence that Google owns a lot of websites. What better way to increase Chrome's low market share than to require Chrome Frame on all Google sites? Plugins are nearly universally a bad thing. The whole tag standard was aimed to "free video from the plugin prison". Please don't lock up the rest of my content.