
  Google Has A Solution For Internet Explorer: Turn It Into Chrome  - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/22/google-turns-internet-explorer-into-chrome-yes-seriously/
======
scotty79
I think someone should write internet worm that upgrades IE on the computers
it infects, spreads for after a while then closes hole through which it
spreads (so the computer won't get infected again) and then delete itself. The
fact that such worm does not exist yet after all years of IE6 suffering might
mean that worm writing hackers are assholes.

~~~
swolchok
No one legitimate is going to do this because of the legal risks. No one
illegitimate is going to do this because it's probably not as profitable as
building a botnet.

~~~
scotty79
Do you imply that people who ignore some laws do things only for profit?

~~~
pwmanagerdied
No, he didn't.

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mquander
This is entertainingly insidious. Can anyone think of similar instances where
a flexible plugin/extension system was subverted to basically turn one product
into a competing product?

~~~
webwright
It's entertaining but it's not insidious. It's a nice bit of additional PR for
the "IE Sucks" movement, but no one will use this. The people who are using
IE6, by and large, don't have the ability to install stuff on their machines.
Assuming any of them know/care what browser they are running. Most of the time
when I answer support emails with "What browser are you running?" the response
is "I don't know-- how do I check that?".

~~~
trunnell
_...don't have the ability to install stuff on their machines_

But their IT departments can install it. Those IT departments usually _want_
to upgrade because they have to write internal web apps and they feel the
pain, too. But they can't upgrade due to various legacy apps that are tightly
coupled to IE6. This lets them have their cake and eat it, too.

~~~
arebop
In my experience working in IT, the cost of MSIE6 is implicit and invisible
and there's even some fear about security and legal problems related to free
software. These companies are still targeting MSIE6 first and sometimes only
in completely new applications; it's support for other browsers that is
explicitly considered as an optional expense.

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awolf
Nice.

The only problem is that most of the people who still use IE6 are in locked-
down corporate environments where they can't upgrade their browsers. They most
likely won't be able to install this plugin either.

~~~
paulo72
You have to wonder if Google have got some sort of killer app they want to
launch but IE is the problem — the sort of killer app that corporates and
institutions will want access too.

I don't see that they did this to raise anti IE feeling (unless they get off
on preaching to the choir).

Don't see that WAVE necessarily fits the bill but it does need proper HTML5
support ...

What do you reckon?

~~~
disnet
Well, the wave people have already said they're stopping development for IE
and will just be forcing the chrome frame:
[http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-wave-in-
int...](http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-wave-in-internet-
explorer.html)

As long as wave takes off it'll drive adoption.

------
GiraffeNecktie
Nice idea. Unfortunately it requires running an .exe. In my work environment,
running an unapproved executable is strictly forbidden. IE is also locked down
pretty tight so I doubt that it would work even if I could run the installer.
I can't even upgrade the Flash plugin, how bad is THAT?

~~~
ShabbyDoo
> running an unapproved executable is strictly forbidden

By technology or words in a policy manual? If it's the latter, most employees
can claim they had no idea they were "running a program"

~~~
jpwagner
haha, just the image of telling someone that "i had no idea it was a program"
makes me laugh.

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CWuestefeld
I can only imagine the support headaches that this will create. On one hand,
the user insists (correctly) that he's using Internet Explorer. On the other
hand, the observed behavior will be as if he's using Chrome.

~~~
natrius
Create a web page for support requests. Check the User Agent in addition to
what the user reports.

~~~
trunnell
Yes, but which part of "IE" is sending the User-Agent header? Does IE send
User-Agent for the initial request and Chrome Frame sends User-Agent for all
subsequent requests (after it detects the <meta> tag)?

~~~
natrius
I presume every IE request will have "chromeframe" in it, which conditionally
serving the meta tag[1] would require.

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

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starchy
I wonder if this will work inside IE Tab in Firefox. So far as I can tell, it
should (and without the performance hit of running VirtualBox inside VMware,
at that).

~~~
billybob
Yo dawg, I know you like to browse, so I put a browser in the browser in your
browser, so you can browse while you browse while you browse.

~~~
paulo72
lmao

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melito
So uh, does this kill browser targeting?

<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/beyonddoctype>

Or can you just do something like content="IE=8;chrome=1" ?

~~~
alabut
Looks like you can target the user agent:

 _"Google Chrome Frame reports that it is available by extending the host's
User-Agent header to add the string chromeframe. You can use server-side
detection to look for this token and determine whether Google Chrome Frame can
be used for a page. If Google Chrome Frame is present, you can insert the
required meta tag; if not, you can redirect users to a page that explains how
to install Google Chrome Frame."_

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

~~~
irrelative
Oh boy. Another browser to support. Thanks Google!

~~~
eterps
Don't support browsers, support standards!

~~~
peoplerock
Isn't a valid part of "supporting standards" _declining_ to support what
ignores standards?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yes, but you have to pick your battles. Unless you run an already ginormously
successful site which can afford a substantial loss of traffic, then being
dogmatic about web standards will only hurt you and do nothing to drive people
away from non-standards compliant browsers.

~~~
paulo72
... not sure anything is likely to drive people away from standards compliant
browsers, maybe just sites that won't render in less capable browsers.

I reckon the user would blame a poorly rendered site on the author/owner
rather than the browser.

Standards are the goal, and it's never been closer. However, interoperability
is more important. Writing markup, code and styles to the standards and
provide at least an accessible level of operability to the less capable user
agents.

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Poiesis
This sounds like something like we'd complain about if Microsoft did it.

~~~
zyb09
no no, if Microsoft had the browser, that passes Acid and Google had some
broken mess you can't even render a diagonal line with, but somehow the vast
majority of clueless users would use the Google Browser,.. then.. that would
be a perfectly fine move of Microsoft.

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icey
So... does this mean IE finally has a chance of having a nice javascript
engine?

For those folks who have nightmares over JavaScript's DOM performance on IE,
this may be a remedy if it includes V8.

"Is our site running slow for you? Try this magic new plugin and the
performance will improve!"

~~~
dflock
It does indeed include V8 and a big shiny 'Speed Up' button might actually be
one plausible way to get people to install the required plug-in.

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oneplusone
I like this. It will be much easier to convince people to install a small
plugin than it would be to explain to them how to upgrade their browser. My
app don't support IE6 for the back-end so no real way for us to loose by using
this.

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derefr
So does this just modify IE, or does it also affect aps that render HTML using
MSHTML? This would be twice as hilarious/awesome if it made Outlook suddenly
render HTML-formatted e-mail to standards.

~~~
blasdel
Outlook 2007 uses Word's HTML rendering (no meaningful CSS2 support!), not
IE's Trident.

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ShabbyDoo
I presume Google's goal is to reduce the percentage of IE6 users down to
levels where consumer-oriented sites don't think it's worth supporting
anymore? Today, IE6 is propped up by personal use of corporate machines during
the workday. I worked on a consumer site where the percentage of IE6 use was
higher during the workday than on nights/weekends. Various negative inputs
into the IE6 ecosystem feedback loop could cause a precipitous death spiral.

------
rufo
I find this solution both hilarious and awesome.

Assuming no major downsides, I'd opt-in.

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ShabbyDoo
Right now, I'm consulting for a large company that still provisions IE6
because it has a bunch of in-house web apps that don't work right on any other
browsers. Since switching thousands of users over to another browser could not
happen in a single day, these legacy apps would all have to be modified to
work in both IE6 and a modern browser. This can be done, but it requires
coordination and resources. Furthermore, the groups responsible for the apps
and those responsible for the desktop standards probably meet on the org chart
at the CIO level.

Sadly, it would be really useful if Chrome (or Firefox or whatever) could
accurately emulate IE6's behaviors for sites of an administrator/user's
choosing. We could fairly easily make Apache insert a special
"PleaseRenderLikeIE6" headers so those applications could continue to function
as-is.

Yes, this is painful to write about, but it's the reality of most large
corporate IT shops.

~~~
tomafro
And doesn't this plugin kind of achieve this? Rather than marking sites which
should be rendered in IE6, you mark them to be rendered in Chrome. So all
legacy sites work without modification (using the IE6 engine), whilst modern
sites can add the chrome meta tag and get rendered by Chrome.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
If we could tag certain sites as legacy, we could uninstall IE6 and default
users to Chrome/Firefox/whatever. Or, we could even install IE8 and use the
Chrome plug-in for true IE6 compatibility -- the opposite of what Google
proposes.

~~~
wvenable
You could simply use the IEView plugin in Firefox to achieve the effect you
are looking for. I have a few IE-only sites and it seamlessly uses IE to
render those sites while in Firefox. You configure which sites automatically
use that rendering engine.

------
pkulak
Seems like this is only for HTML5 sites. IE 8 actually renders very well. I've
yet to have something render in FF/Safari differently than IE 8. It's IE 7 and
6 that are the bane of my existence, and it's probably easier to get those
users to upgrade to 8 than install a plugin.

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kentosi
Reminds me of the "IE Tab" plugin for firefox, which allows you to render your
current tab in ie-format.

It's quite useful when you're designing websites, and also useful when your
organisation has legacy apps that only display properly in ie6.

------
known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunascape_(web_browser)> is unique in that it
contains three rendering engines: Gecko (used in Mozilla Firefox), Webkit
(used in Apple Safari and Google Chrome), and Trident (used in Microsoft
Internet Explorer). The user can switch between layout engines seamlessly.

------
croby
From reading the article and then the FAQ on the Google Chrome Frame site, I
don't see how they'll get around users not having admin access to their
machines. It seems to require a download/install which is the current issue
preventing a large base of users from upgrading beyond IE6.

~~~
rufo
If your application is designed properly, you don't need admin rights to
install - proper Windows installers are supposed to support a "This User Only"
install method which shouldn't require admin rights.

~~~
dflock
True - and Chrome (the full install) already does this - it installs
everything into your C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local
Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome folder. I think the main issue isn't
this, it's that many of the corporate desktops that are still running older IE
versions are no-installing-anything-at-all-locked-down.

~~~
rufo
I'm wondering if there's a population of users that have computers that are
not _that_ locked down, but don't have the savvy to install a browser. (My
father's workplace gives him standard-User level access, but he's still been
able to install Firefox.)

Additionally, this is probably wishful thinking, but I wonder if there's any
chance IT departments would actually be somewhat friendly to this.
Theoretically it shouldn't add much (if any) support load, since websites have
to opt-in to Google Chrome Frame. An IT department could install it, still
have all their internal apps run fine on IE and their users can have a better
experience on the web without having to know or care about it.

(Of course, that assumes IT departments would actually want to give their
users a better web experience to begin with...)

------
paul9290
For distribution will they sneak it into google toolbar or offer an option to
install it when you install Google toolbar?

Overall this sounds great, but there still is one huge problem; the average
net user(majority) won't install this. They don't even know what a web browser
is.

------
est
OK, some what I can feel Google CF is extremely insecure.

cf:<http://tinyurl.com/google-bart> won't display new 301/302 URL correctly on
address bar and this is good for phising.

not found where source code for npchrome_tab.dll is, but
RegisterNPAPIPlugin(), and UnregisterNPAPIPlugin() looks vulnerable since
mixing two plugin mechanism into one is catastrophic.

Here's typelib for npchrome_tab.dll

<http://initiative.yo2.cn/archives/642723#typelib>

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GrandMasterBirt
To be honest I think this is step 1, perhaps the best first step EVER MADE to
move towards progress in HTML. With this plugin basically we can finally make
messages on websites in the same way flash is installed to download google
chrome and we have HTML5 compliance (once the spec is done and fully
implemented). It will be great. Till now were stuck with HTML 4.1 until the
entire world moves to IE8 AT LEAST. This is really a technological leap.

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onreact-com
I'd prefer a more matter of fact source like this one: "Google Chrome Injects
Itself Into Internet Explorer With Chrome Frame"
[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_launches_chrome_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_launches_chrome_frame_internet_explorer_plugin.php)

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onreact-com
Microsoft will block this like Apple did with Google iPhone apps.

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wglb
How very cool.

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tamersalama
is it April 1 already?

------
idan
Yo chromeframe, I'm happy for you and I'ma let you finish but Lynx was one of
the best browsers of all time.

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pluc
You know it's TechCrunch when the only credible thing you can find in that
article are external. Google Code link + YouTube video. Otherwise, I probably
would've assumed some kind of gossip reporting as usual.

