Folks we at IE8Blog love cool things. An example of an interesting software solution is a Firefox add-on called IE Tab. IE Tab allows you to load an instance of Internet Explorer in a tab within Firefox. Great for evaluating rending and javascript quickly with in the same application. (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419).
We have great passion for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and the compatibility improvements and the high level of security that has been put into the product over the years. By far Internet Explorer 8 is the most secure browser out there. Several reports have been done on the safety that IE8 brings to the table not only for the consumer at home but for corporate world.
There are always concerns about the security of the browser when installing add-ons, Flash has seen its fair share of vulnerabilities over the years and so have many other popular ActiveX controls. As always we caution you about add-ons that directly alter the core browser technology. Just like any software Google Chrome had and has its fair share of vulnerabilities as well.
Browser Security – Phishing Test Report – http://nsslabs.com/browser-security-phishing-3q2009
Browser Security – Socially Engineered Malware Test Report – http://nsslabs.com/browser-security-malware-3q2009
Okay enough about talking up the security of IE8, yes we like Internet Explorer.
Google has figured out how to create a direct plug-in to Internet Explorer that can change the rendering engine, jscript engine, and to some degree the network stack to Google Chrome. Despite what happens after the fact one does need to admit that swapping out core features of IE is rather cool from a pure technology point of view.
One should give credit to both companies, Microsoft for their IE API’s and Google for their creative us of the IE API set.
From the write up this is being driven by the need for a high end experience with Google Wave (we know nothing about Google Wave yet – http://wave.google.com/)
http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/ <- Get Google Chrome
http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/developers_guide.html <- Not just for developers
From reviewing the developers guide there meta header http-equiv is used to trigger the use of the Chrome engine..
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">
For those up on Internet Explorer 8.0 know that the X-UA-Compatible is used to switch the rendering mode of IE as well. See META Tags and Locking in Future Compatibility at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc817574.aspx
Some other writes up on Google Chrome
http://blog.chromium.org/2009/09/introducing-google-chrome-frame.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=5537
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/09/22/google-brings-chrome-rendering-engine-to-ie6-7-and-8
UPDATES from our readers and our own limited testing:
Some of our readers have already started to report back on Chrome Frame results.
1. cf:http://acid3.acidtests.org/ will put IE in Chrome Frame Mode, note the cf: which we guess you would call a protocol handler. Running the same page without cf: you can see the obvious rendering differences.
2. If you have the full Chrome browser installed and open a new window folks are reporting that Chrome Frame is opening the new window in the Chrome Browser.
3. The status bar in IE is reporting UNKNOWN zone, we feel this would be expected but is important as it does appear Zone technology is not available in when in Chrome Frame mode. Further testing on this is required to validate.
4. You can not PRINT or PRINT PREVIEW when in Chrome Frame mode. Not sure if window.print will fire or not. We expect future version of CF to have at least basic printing functionality.
5. We did test Firefox with the IE Tab add-on and could not get Chrome Frame to initialize when the Firefox was switched to IE Mode.
6. Some users reported problems with submitting form data when under the Chrome Frame interface.
7. So far no one is reporting hangs, freezes, or crashes under the Chrome Frame interface.
8. SSL thus far from our limited testing is working as expected. Of course it is yet to be seen what the results are with Client Certificate situations. There is a Network Layer options via Chrome Frame but we have not figured out how to test if the Chrome Network layer is being utilized or not.
9. We just noticed that when you right click on a page you will see the Chrome Frame menu versus the Internet Explorer context menu. Check out the View Source feature. We are not 100% sure yet if the Chrome Development tools are picked up as a result of having Chrome (the browser installed on the same system). Further review required.
10. Uninstall of Chrome Frame problems. Funny title on the blog post.
Uninstall is not resetting various classes (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes) from ChromeHTML back to htmlfile impacting the default browser.
We clean our own table when eating at McDonald’s
Unconfirmed by IE8BLOG.COM