

Mozilla claims Chrome in IE makes for "browser soup" - wglb
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138662/Mozilla_slams_Google_s_Chrome_Frame_as_browser_soup_

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anshul
That's pretty hypocritical of Mozilla. About a year ago, they were flaunting
similar ambitions[1] and actively working on Screaming monkey[2].

Quote, "Mozilla is developing a plugin for Internet Explorer that will add
support for the HTML5 Canvas element. Microsoft's attempts to stifle adoption
of open web standards could soon be circumvented by plugins that bring Firefox
technology to Internet Explorer."

Talk of double standards...

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/08/mozilla-
drags-i...](http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/08/mozilla-drags-ie-
into-the-future-with-canvas-element-plugin.ars)

HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=280375>

[2] <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Tamarin:ScreamingMonkey>

~~~
Ratatat
This sould be nuanced. Screaming Monkey and the Canvas plugin are drop-in
replacements. The Chrome frame is optional, and could possibly interfere with
cookies or history handling (although I'm not sure it's the case). The problem
raised by Mitchell Baker is that it would make it very hard to "manage
information across websites". Did I hear XSS and tracking cookies?

~~~
anshul
Chrome Frame lets IE handle cookies and history and all that. XSS and tracking
cookies keep working as they always have. Chrome frame uses the IE network
stack to ensure this[1]. The canvas plugin and screaming monkey were both
intended to be implemented using tags[2].

I expected a better response from Mozilla than this.

[1]
[http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/developers_guide.h...](http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/developers_guide.html)

[2] [http://blog.vlad1.com/2008/07/30/no-browser-left-
behind/#com...](http://blog.vlad1.com/2008/07/30/no-browser-left-
behind/#comment-2436)

Edit: Added [2].

~~~
Ratatat
Thanks for the info.

------
joechung
Noteworthy that the "IE Tab" is a popular Firefox add-on:
<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419>

~~~
dbz
I do not believe this to be noteworthy because you can clearly choose to open
things in IE. Whereas in the chrome frame you get double the security risk and
don't get to choose which browser to use. At least with that plugin you get a
choice.

~~~
boucher
Users simply don't care about this. They think google is the browser already.
Mozilla has this bizarre notion that people will be upset because they don't
know which rendering engine they are currently using.

------
collint
The answer is quite obvious.

While traditional institutional fear make it invisible.

It is sad even Mozilla execs cannot see the obvious solution raised by the
question Google has asked.

Browser vendors could standardize at an even lower level.

A system following the heart of Unix could allow for shared architectural
components between the vendors and rapid innovation in the industry as a
whole.

Why shouldn't MSIE be able to use the rendering engine of Chrome + the
Javascript engine of Mozilla?

A simple "chassis" for W3C supporting browsers isn't some technological
utopian vision. Just simple, stupid, good design.

Getting vendors (and the developers "on the ground") to work on something
would be the hard part.

But oh what a wondrous world it would be.

------
tlrobinson
So we've seen Microsoft and Mozilla whine about Chrome Frame, how about anyone
_without_ a vested interest in seeing Chrome fail?

------
codexon
I agree with Mozilla.

It would become an easy way out for people to just have 2 click plugins for
their website instead of forcing people to take the hard way and install a
full browser.

~~~
boucher
Why is this bad? From anyone other than a browser vendor's perspective.

~~~
codexon
Its bad because you would have maybe a dozen different "browser" plugins to
visit several different websites.

You as a web designer wouldn't know which ones to design for especially if
people can't install plugins, and as a result, would have to add on even more
testing than the usual IE6/7/FF/Opera/Chrome/Safari.

Your website will also include the special hashtag thingie cruft at the top to
support multiple browsers.

Overall, its a bad bad idea.

~~~
tumult
I guess this needs repeating: Chrome Frame doesn't load unless there's a
specific tag in the page telling it to.

~~~
codexon
Do I really have to spell this out for the HN audience? (Really annoyed by
these comments and downvotes).

You don't really think chrome will be the only browser to do this? And also,
you will be snooping for plugin compatibility just like people are doing today
for browser compatibility.

~~~
boucher
You don't need to spell anything out. People disagree with you.

First, there's no realistic world in which all of a sudden everyone is using
different plugins. Almost nobody in the world has the kind of distribution
that Google does. Very few people could pull this off, and I doubt even Google
can.

Second, if there were a way to get users to install plugins 99% of the time,
then we wouldn't have half the issues we currently do. You act like it would
be a bad thing to test for the availability of plugins which enabled new
features. It wouldn't be. It would actually be quite awesome.

Third, Chrome Frame is exactly the same as Chrome, so, at least in theory,
there is NO NEED to test for anything knew. Even if every browser did this,
there would be NO NEW browsers. There may be some implementation gotchas, but
I don't see the same kind of doomsday scenario you do.

Anyway, I think it's highly unlikely Chrome Frame goes anywhere at all.

