Chrome Frame beta boosts security, browser integration
By
Ryan Paul |
Last updated about 19 hours ago
Google has released a beta version of its Chrome Frame plugin for Internet Explorer. The new beta includes an updated version of the rendering engine and brings a number of significant improvements to browser integration. The project has moved out of the proof-of-concept stage and is maturing into a useful tool.
Chrome Frame makes it possible for Internet Explorer to display content using Chrome's WebKit-based HTML rendering engine. When it is installed, it will be used instead of Internet Explorer's own Trident engine when the browser attempts to load a page that has a special meta tag.
The eventual target audience will consist of users who want to access next-generation Web applications, but still rely on Internet Explorer for rendering legacy IE-specific content. There are a lot of IE6 users at large companies, for example, that don't have the IT resources to rebuild their intranet software or roll out modern browsers. Chrome Frame could be a useful transitional mechanism for organizations that have a large installed base of old IE versions.
When the plugin was
released last year, it was made available as a developer preview so that Google could collect feedback from the Web development community. It is now in beta, which signifies a higher level of robustness, but Google is still not yet actively encouraging its adoption in production environments. The software still requires more refinement before it will be ready for widespread use.
Google has made a lot of progress on the project and has addressed many of the plugin's limitations and security weaknesses. One major improvement is support for private browsing. When the user enables Internet Explorer's InPrivate mode, the Chrome Frame plugin will use Chrome's Incognito feature so that the user's browsing remains private. The plugin is also designed to better respect the user's IE settings.
"Since our initial launch, we've been listening to developers: instead of adding new bells and whistles, we've fixed more than 200 bugs to make integration with Internet Explorer seamless while improving security, stability, and performance," wrote Google engineers Amit Joshi and Alex Russel in a
blog entry about the new beta. "For example, we've improved our handling of Internet Explorer's InPrivate browsing, cache clearing, and cookie blocking. All of the enhancements and features of Google Chrome 5.0 are available in Google Chrome Frame too, including HTML5 audio and video, canvas, geolocation, workers, and databases."
We tested the new beta version of Chrome Frame in Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 in order to evaluate the seamlessness of the plugin. It's very good, but there are still some weaknesses that have not yet been addressed. For example, the zoom-level slider and many context menu items are not accessible on pages that are rendered with the plugin. It also fails to correctly show thumbnail previews in the browser's Quick Tabs view. But the lack of support for these IE8 features is obviously not problematic when the plugin is used in older versions of the browser, which is likely the target use case anyway.