Cheeky Google embeds Chrome into Internet Explorer

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 23 Sep 2009 at 17:30

Google is making an audacious attempt to undermine Microsoft, by encouraging Internet Explorer users to use the Chrome rendering engine.

Google Chrome Frame is a plugin for Internet Explorer that essentially hands over the rendering of the page to the WebKit engine underpinning Chrome. It works on a similar principle to the widely-used IE Tab plug-in for Firefox, which uses Internet Explorer to render pages that are incompatible with the Mozilla browser.

The search giant claims this will lead to improved browser performance for IE users, thanks to a faster JavaScript engine, support for HTML 5 and better CSS handling. PC Pro's own tests have repeatedly shown that Chrome far outstrips Internet Explorer in terms of raw performance, using JavaScript benchmarks such as SunSpider.

Google allows web developers to trigger Chrome Frame by inserting a single line of code into their webpages. Cheekily, the switch is achieved using a tag Microsoft invented to emulate compatibility with older versions of Internet Explorer.

Visitors who turn up to Chrome Frame-tagged sites in other browsers, such as Firefox or Safari, will continue to have the page rendered by the native browser.

Chrome Frame works with Internet Explorer 6 and upwards, potentially coming to the aid of workers whose companies impose an IE lockdown on their desktops. Indeed, recent figures showed that Internet Explorer 6 was still the single biggest browser in use worldwide.

Click here to download Google Chrome Frame