Google Chrome as an Internet Explorer plugin
I just encountered a quite mindboggling piece of news on the Google Wave blog. It seems they have decided not to support Internet Explorer at all. Not IE6, IE7 or IE8. Surprised? I sure was. What’s even better is that to still give these users the opportunity to use Google Wave, they’ve built a plugin for Internet Explorer, that loads the Chrome browser with Google Wave inside it.
What? Load a browser as a plugin inside another one? I guess this is a real war after all? Who will build the first browser to load Firefox into Chrome? Internet Explorer inside Firefox?
Why? Well, now they don’t have to care about Internet Explorer support at all. Felt that heavy weight lift from your shoulders? Suddenly large parts of HTML5, CSS3, and modern javascript, is available to them, with no backporting and performance tuning needed. Must be fabulous.
Now. Combine that with the possibility for the developer to choose when to trigger the different browsers. We’re up for a whole new ride. You’re invited.
frebro (3 comments) ( 23 Sep 2009 )
The big challenge still remains of course; to make users of IE install the plugin. I suppose using services like Wave to actively force them to do it is one way, but I wonder what they plan to do about all the corporate users who don’t have admin access to their workstations.
Linus G Thiel (1 comments) ( 23 Sep 2009 )
Emil, not to be cheeky, but it’s been available for ages:
http://ietab.mozdev.org/
Glad to see that the tables have turned, though!
Carl-Emil Lagerstedt (1 comments) ( 23 Sep 2009 )
Internet Explorer in Firefox has been around a long time https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419
Its very useful for us running Firefox in a corporate environment that only supports IE.
frebro (3 comments) ( 23 Sep 2009 )
Carl-Emil + Linus: I don’t think you guys get it. This plugin allows you to run Chrome inside IE. That’s pretty new, because suddenly we can ignore their poor standards support.
frebro (3 comments) ( 23 Sep 2009 )
…altough you are of course right about it being possible to load IE inside FF :)
Emil Stenström (605 comments) ( 23 Sep 2009 )
@Linus G Theil, Carl-Emil Lagerstedt: Yeah, I use that one myself. This is different though, since it doesn’t require Chrome to be installed separately. The plugin is all you need.
mhz (1 comments) ( 24 Sep 2009 )
>>>Who will build the first browser to load [...]
Or which configuration will be the first to reach a 1000 character user agent string?
Anders Ytterström (21 comments) ( 1 Oct 2009 )
… and Microsoft claims it is bad for security reasons. Who did not see that one coming?
Alex (22 comments) ( 9 Oct 2009 )
Nice to hear that but i think that only a small procent of users will install and use this plugin.
Anyway, let us wait for the Microsoft giant reply.
Cody (13 comments) ( 9 Oct 2009 )
Its weird that they are trying to push a plug-in and emulate the different browsers. Wouldn’t it be easier to support IE?
Alex (22 comments) ( 10 Oct 2009 )
@Cody, wouldn’t be easier for us to return back in ‘97 and use only Windows 98 and internet explorer 5.5? Whats the point of implementing solutions for dropped software?
Cody (13 comments) ( 16 Oct 2009 )
I’m sorry if you have taken this the wrong way, but I never meant to support old software. IE is still a popular internet browser. I was just surprised that they weren’t going to support any version of it.