GetBrowser » IE

Mozilla Firefox Abandons Internet Explorer plug-in

Calking Chi — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:16:07 +0000

We have just learned that Mozilla were thinking of developing a plug-in that would allow Internet Explorer to run on Firefox. Mozilla had hope that this could turn IE into a decent browser, but decided not to go ahead with the idea. This is something that Google should have done as well.

According to The Register, Asa Dotzle from Mozilla Corp. said that this idea of a plug-in much like the one that Google Chrome uses was discussed two years ago. The idea was to try to make Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser much faster, this would have been achieved by using the Firefox JavaScript engine.

Google thought that there was something good to offer an IE plug-in, which they released last September. Google have also been working hard on Google Wave and have made certain that Internet Explorer is able to run the new software.

Microsoft and Mozilla were not happy about this as they feel that the Chrome Frame would undermine not only the security but privacy as well. The move would also throw a huge amount of confusion if implanted.

In short, Chrome Frame is a plug-in. It’s like Flash. It doesn’t talk to things around it in the ways that it should.

Europe to Test Microsoft Browser Ballot System

Calking Chi — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:39:43 +0000

Finally, Microsoft has come up with a browser ballot screen the European Union likes.

The EU was not going to approve Windows 7 without a way for users to choose a browser other than Internet Explorer. Microsoft had taken a first pass at a browser ballot, but the EU didn’t like that one. Now, in the second go-round, Redmond has come up with something that passes muster.

The new ballot allows browsers to be easily downloaded from the ballot screen; doesn’t favor any one browser—not even IE—over another; includes a little introduction to each browser; and presents browser choices alphabetically.

If this is really the end of Microsoft’s long browser battle in Europe, the company can breathe a sigh of relief.

In January, the European Commission announced that Microsoft violated European competition law by bundling its Internet Explorer browser with Windows. As a result, Microsoft announced on June 11 that it would ship a version of Windows 7 in Europe without a browser, dubbed Windows 7 E.

All in all, if EU Approves Test of Windows 7 ‘Browser Ballot’ at last, we may see such a situation: IE may lose more market share in Europe while other browsers will gain more market share st the same time. But what does Opera will do next step?

Mozilla’s Reply: Chrome Frame Will Result in “Browser Soup”

Calking Chi — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:44:06 +0000

Mozilla and Microsoft are always opposite when it comes to browser technology, but now, they agree broadly on one thing: Google plug-in for IE Chrome Frame. Mozilla executives today took shots at Google for pitching its Chrome Frame plug-in as a solution to Internet Explorer’s poor performance, with one arguing that Google’s move will result in “browser soup.”

Last week, Chrome Frame released, which can let IE6, IE7 and IE8 utilize the Chrome browser’s WebKit rendering engine, as well as its high-performance V8 JavaScript engine. Google pitched the plug-in as a way to instantly improve the performance of the notoriously slow IE, and as a way for Web developers to support standards IE can’t handle, including HTML 5. As a new weapon of Google, Microsoft don’t agree with Google of course.

Nowadays, Mitchell Baker, the former CEO of Mozilla and currently the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, disagreed with Google’s tactic to slip Chrome inside IE. Strongly.

“The overall effects of Chrome Frame are undesirable,” she said in an entry to her personal blog late Monday. “I predict positive results will not be enduring and — and to the extent it is adopted — Chrome Frame will end in growing fragmentation and loss of control for most of us, including Web developers.”

According to Baker, Chrome Frame’s browser-in-a-browser will confuse users and render some of their familiar tools useless.

As we all know, Mozilla is a partner of Google and Firefox’s most incomes comes from Google. Nowadays, It seems that Mozilla just wants to side with Microsoft against Google, which is amazing indeed.

Google Sneaks Chrome Frame into IE—the War Between Google and Microsoft

Calking Chi — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:46:04 +0000

Some days ago, Google released an IE plug-in named Chrome Frame designed to let Microsoft’s IE browser use the features and performance of Google’s own Chrome browser.

For IE users, installing Google Chrome Frame will allow them to seamlessly enjoy modern Web apps at blazing speeds, through the familiar interface of the version of IE that they are currently using. That is to say, It can let IE 6, 7, or 8 use Chrome to render Web pages and execute their JavaScript programs. To use it, people must install the open-source plug-in, currently in the developer preview stage, and Web developers must insert a line of code onto their Web sites that engages Chrome Frame when a person visits the site.

When Chrome Frame appears, the owner of IE—Microsoft becomes nervous and angry of course. Thus, when get the information about Chrome Frame, Microsoft scrambled to ruin Google’s party, and warned users not to download the plug-in for Google Chrome Frame makes IE less secure. As is said by Microsoft, this plug-in allegedly increases opportunities for malicious behaviour.

Now, as a response to Microsoft, Google defends the security of its new Chrome Frame plug-in and claims that the software actually makes IE safer and more secure.

So, you see, here is just a word-war between Google Chrome and Microsoft IE. They both want to defeat the opposite and gain more browser market share. But what will happen next?

Google Chrome Gets into IE with Plug-in Chrome Frame

Calking Chi — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:15:24 +0000

Prehaps in order to help web designers and developers to build rich apps, Google has released a plug-in called Google Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer, which is wielding a fierce new weapon in its war against Internet Explorer too.

Here is what Google says in their Google’s Chromium Blog about Chrome Frame:

“Google Chrome Frame is an early-stage open source plug-in that can bring Google Chrome’s open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. With Google Chrome Frame, you can:

Start using open web technologies – like the HTML5 canvas tag – right away, even technologies that aren’t yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8.

Take advantage of JavaScript performance improvements to make your apps faster and more responsive.”

The Google team is also trying the idea of Chrome Frame into the notion of maintaining an open Web, something the company has recently been working hard to promote. Today’s announcement puts much emphasis on the fact that Chrome Frame is open source and focused on increasing the availability of open Web technologies.

The Chrome Frame plug-in requires IE6, IE7 or IE8 on Windows XP or Windows Vista, and can be downloaded from Google’s site. And it can be fairly used simply, developers just have to add a single tag to web page which detects whether IE has Frame plug-in installed or not.

Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview for IE Browser Testing

Calking Chi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 05:07:45 +0000

For web designers and webmasters, browser testing is an important and frustrating problem. In most cases, developers design for one target browser (such as IE 6) and once they’re done, they start tweaking their design to make it compatible with other browsers (such as IE, Firefox and so on).

In order to make test easy for these developers, there are many ways available before a website launched, and these include having multiple browsers and operating systems installed, running virtual machines with different configurations or using a hosted image service where a screenshot is produced for a given browser version and operating system to be used for comparison purposes.

Starting today, there’s a new way for testing browser compatibility developed by Microsoft and it’s called SuperPreview. In this article, I’ll be giving you a brief review of SuperPreview as well as comparing and listing alternate systems for testing your website designs.

“We built SuperPreview to simplify the process of testing and debugging layout issues across different web browsers and platforms. With SuperPreview you can view your pages in multiple browsers simultaneously or view how a page renders in a browser and compare it to a comp or mock-up image of a page. SuperPreview helps web site authors address an important part of that problem—namely, how to identify and fix cross-browser layout issues,” revealed Steve Guttman, product unit manager, Expression Web.

With SuperPreview, Microsoft hopes to streamline the migration of websites from older versions of Internet Explorer to IE8. Because they are tailored to a different set of standards, websites designed for a specific version of IE will be rendered erroneously in another version. This is why Microsoft has also included multiple rendering engines into IE8, allowing the browser to become compatible with older content which is not in tune with modern web standards.

Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview is available for download here.

Virtual PC Image–Application Compatibility for Windows IE

Calking Chi — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:39:18 +0000

Besides checking their websites and designs in browsers from all kinds of browser developers, web designers often need to check it in different versions of a browser too. For example, Mozilla’s Firefox has a distribution rate that is still divided among the versions 2, 3 and 3.5 of Firefox making it necessary to test the website in all three of these versions.

Fortunately, there are various third apps and softwares to help us test a website in different versions of IE, such as IETester, which makes it possible to install multiple versions of IE on the same computer operating system. Expect of IETester, Browsershots, are another online tools available that can test a website in various browsers.

Nowadays, a third possibility is now offered by Microsoft directly in the form of virtual PC images. IE 6, 7 and IE 8 are provided as virtual PC images. The images should come in handy for anyone running Windows Vista who wants to see how their web page look in Internet Explorer under Windows XP.

The Windows XP images have a size of around 600 Megabytes each while the Windows Vista images triple that size. The only limitation is an expiration date for the virtual PC images. The Windows XP images will expire in January 2010 while the Vista images will expire 120 days after their first execution. These expiration dates make the virtual PC images a less than favorable solution but its probably better than not testing the various editions of Internet Explorer at all.

If you are a web designer or webmaster who is looking for a convenient way to check websites compatibility,you may get interested in the virtual PC images. If do, you can download them directly from the Microsoft official website.

Google Launches New Stable Version of Chrome 3.0

Calking Chi — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:02:33 +0000

Google is always updated Chrome browser so quickly. The stable release was Google Chrome 2 for some time, the stable developer build Google Chrome 3 and the latest build Google Chrome 4. Google Chrome 2 was the version that was offered at the Chrome official website until now.

Today, Google announced the availability of new stable Chrome release tagged as version 3.0.195.21, which keeps the pressure on competing tools by boosting JavaScript performance by 25% compared with the latest stable release. Users who are currently using Google Chrome 2.0 will see an update prompt soon to update to the new version.

Besides improved JavaScript performance, we can also see that the following release also offers redesigned tab page, updated Omnibox, themes and support for HTML5 video tags makes running embedded videos smoother, avoiding the need to use a plug-in too. In fact, the update just comes about a year after Google Chrome made its debut.

Google announced some days ago:” This release comes hot on the heels of 51 developer, 21 beta and 15 stable updates and 3,505 bugfixes in the past year”, when Chrome one year birthday came on September 2 2009.

Google Chrome has only grabbed a 2.84% market share of the global market, according to Net Applications’s August stats. Microsoft Internet Explorer leads the pack with 66.97% and Mozilla Firefox has better than 22.98%, nearly matching its record of 23.8%. Thus, what Google should to do next is just to take measures to improve Chrome’s market share. That is the question.

GetBrowser » IE

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