Mozilla opposes Google Chrome Frame. No soup for you
From the ‘Mozilla Agreeing with Microsoft’ files:
Microsoft and Mozilla are two organizations that tend not to agree on many different topics. When it comes to Google’s Chrome Frame, it’s a different story.
Mitchell Baker Chair of the Mozilla Foundation has come out swinging against Chrome Frame, which is a plug-in for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer providing Google Chrome rendering technology. Microsoft has said that Chrome Frame isn’t a good thing and Mozilla’s Baker sees it as leading to further browser fragmentation as well.
Baker sees Chrome Frame leading to a ‘browser soup’ where users (and developers to some extent) are using a ’soup’ of browser components which could lead to control and potential security issues.
“I predict positive results will not be enduring 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,” Baker blogged.
Among the concerns that Baker has is how passwords, security settings, personalization, tagging and bookmarking will be handled across the Chrome Frame/IE hybrid.
In her view, due to the fact that various parts of the browser are no longer connected, it’s not clear that actions made in IE will have the same results if the user is using Chrome frame, which is essentially a browser-within-a-browser.
“Once your browser has fragmented into multiple rendering engines, it’s very hard to manage information across websites,” Baker said. “Some information will be manageable from the browser you use and some information from Chrome Frame.”
Certainly Baker’s concerns are legitimate, but isn’t the issue the same as the one that developers (and users) face, with other plug-ins and add-ons? The real issue here is control.
That is, Mozilla (and Microsoft) want the browser vendor to be in control. The Google Chrome Frame approach is an opposing view in some respects, where the developer gets control (if the user has the plug-in) by forcing the user to have a site render using Chrome Frame.
Baker warns that other developers could see value in Google’s approach which could lead to
browser-within-a-browser plug-ins for other sites and services. That would lead to more complexity and potential security issues.
“The result is a sort of browser-soup, where a given user action serves up some sort of response, but it’s not clear what the result will be: are my passwords and history stored in chrome frame? some other variant? in what I think of as “my” browser?” Baker said. “This makes the web less knowable, less understandable, and certainly less manageable.”
From the ‘Mozilla Agreeing with Microsoft’ files:
Microsoft and Mozilla are two organizations that tend not to agree on many different topics. When it comes to Google’s Chrome Frame, it’s a different story.
Mitchell Baker Chair of the Mozilla Foundation has come out swinging against Chrome Frame, which is a plug-in for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer providing Google Chrome rendering technology. Microsoft has said that Chrome Frame isn’t a good thing and Mozilla’s Baker sees it as leading to further browser fragmentation as well.
Baker sees Chrome Frame leading to a ‘browser soup’ where users (and developers to some extent) are using a ’soup’ of browser components which could lead to control and potential security issues.
“I predict positive results will not be enduring 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,” Baker blogged.
Among the concerns that Baker has is how passwords, security settings, personalization, tagging and bookmarking will be handled across the Chrome Frame/IE hybrid.
(more…)
