Google Chrome Frame. Saviour of the internet?

It’s a simple and brilliant concept. Get people to install a plugin on internet explorer, add a meta tag to your source code, then Google Chrome Frame will render the page using Webkit and its Javascript engine instead. It sounds like it could save the internet. But will it work?

By Clinton Montague

Posts by Clinton Montague
Clinton Montague’s Website

It’s a brilliant idea – and it’s simple to get working. Add this line of code into the head of your code…

<meta equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">

…and Internet Explorer will render the page as if it were being viewed in Google’s Chrome.

Why it won’t fix the internet

  1. It’s a plugin which needs to be installed on the user’s computer. If they don’t want to/can’t upgrade their browser, why/how would they install a plugin
  2. It will only ‘turn on’ when the website author has put the meta tag in their code
  3. It might give the impression of a ‘broken internet’ when people view a website in one location with IE6 and Frame, then go home to view the site in their vanilla IE6 and the site being slow, not working and looking different

Having said that, I’m all for it, and I think that I might start using the tag; if people actively want a better internet but are stuck with IE, give them what they’re asking for – it’s the polite thing to do.

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