Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
Chromium is the open source web browser project from which Google Chrome draws its source code. The project's hourly Chromium snapshots appear essentially similar to the latest builds of Google Chrome aside from the omission of certain Google additions, most noticeable among them: Google's...
project. It went stable on September 2010, on the first birthday of the project.
Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...
Windows Internet Explorer 8 is a web browser developed by Microsoft in the Internet Explorer browser series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available...
Windows Internet Explorer 9 is the current version of the Internet Explorer web browser from Microsoft. It was released to the public on March 14, 2011 at 21:00 PDT. Internet Explorer 9 supports several CSS 3 properties, embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles support via Windows Color System, and...
. It allows suitably coded web pages to be displayed in Internet Explorer by Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...
WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
A web browser engine, , is a software component that takes marked up content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer...
and V8 JavaScript engine. In a test by ComputerWorld
Computerworld
Computerworld is an IT magazine that provides information for senior IT leaders. It is published in many countries around the world under the same or similar names. Its publisher is International Data Group. Computerworld serves the needs of IT management via print and online...
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
code ran 10 times faster with the plug-in.
Development of Google Chrome Frame was required in order for Google Wave
Google Wave
Apache Wave is a software framework for real-time collaborative editing online. Google Inc. originally developed it as Google Wave.It was announced at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009....
, which requires HTML5, to function in Internet Explorer.
The first stable version supporting Non-Admin Chrome Frame was rolled out on August 30 2011. The new Chrome Frame installer will now run at Admin level by default and will fall back to Non-Admin mode if the user does not have the necessary permissions on their machine.
Deployment
Web developers can allow their websites to use the plug-in by using the following code on their web pages:
This will cause the page to render in Chrome Frame for users who have it installed, without changing it for users who have not.
In February 2010, Google Chrome Frame was updated to also support deployment by HTTP headers, with a number of advantages, such as simplified sitewide support and support of the application/xhtml+xml MIME type even on Internet Explorer which normally does not support this MIME type for XHTML documents. For a blanket rollout on an entire web site, an Apache server with mod_headers and mod_setenvif enabled can specify a header directive like this:
Internet Explorer add-ons do not function on pages rendered using WebKit. There has been criticism concerning Chrome Frame from Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
as Chrome Frame “can disable IE features and muddle users’ understanding of Web security matters”. With Google Chrome Frame installed, users can add the gcf: prefix to URLs to render them with WebKit and V8 instead of Internet Explorer’s built-in Trident
Trident (layout engine)
Trident is the name of the layout engine for the Microsoft Windows version of Internet Explorer.It was first introduced with the release of Internet Explorer version 4.0 in October 1997; it has been steadily upgraded and remains in use today...
engine after enabling this feature via a registry setting. An update also brought the possibility to navigate pages in IE utilising WebKit/V8 without the gcf: prefix:
Registry key
Value
Function
HKCU\Software\Google\ChromeFrame
AllowUnsafeURLs=1 (DWORD)
By adding the gcf: prefix to the URL in address bar, the page will load rendered with WebKit/V8
IsDefaultRenderer=1 (DWORD)
Makes WebKit/V8 the default rendering technique
Google Chrome Frame communicates with Google’s servers; it reports installation to Google, downloads updates to Chrome Frame and Google’s Safe Browsing list, and at the user’s option can send Google usage statistics and crash reports.
