Google: Chrome Frame ready for prime time

From CNET News.com: Google's Chrome Frame, a project to retrofit older versions of Internet Explorer with modern browser features, has reached "stable" status, which the company believes means it's ready for widespread use.

"After months of polishing, Google Chrome Frame now starts three times faster on Windows Vista and Windows 7 and the most common conflicts with other plug-ins have been fixed," said programmers Tomas Gunnarsson and Robert Shield in a blog post Wednesday. Chrome Frame emerged publicly one year ago as a developer preview and graduated to beta status in June, and the programmers promised further improvements in the future as Chrome Frame gets on the six-week release cycle of the standalone Chrome browser.

Loathing for IE6 is universal among Web developers who must reckon with its lack of standards support, sluggish JavaScript support, and less secure design; Microsoft is among those who fervently want to see it replaced. Chrome frame is a curious approach to the problem, though: given abundanct free browser alternatives--including two other major IE releases that arrived since IE6's 2001 debut--it's not clear why somebody would choose an IE brain transplant over just installing a new browser.

Another hurdle for Chrome Frame is that Web site operators must support it by adding a line of code that Chrome Frame looks for when the page is loaded.

IE6 shipped with Windows XP, an operating system that's still widely used, especially in corporate environments where internal applications sometimes don't work with other browsers. Even those who'd like to dump IE6 often can't because their systems are locked down by corporate IT departments.

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