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Oct. 1, 2009

On any given day, Microsoft is used to getting criticized. After all, it is the biggest software company in the world and of course, it's always hard to please everyone at the same time. But lately the software giant did get some support from an unexpected group in the battle over the Chrome browser.

Google has added an extension which embeds Google's Chrome browser in Internet Explorer. Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering for Mozilla gives his views in a blog posting in which he criticises the plug-in.

Although Shaver thinks that much of the Internet works better with a more modern browser than Internet Explorer, he nonetheless thinks that inserting another browser, in this case "Chrome Frame" into Internet Explorer is wrong-headed, as it weakens or disables a whole range of functions including private browsing modes and security settings, as well as ease-of-use functions such as accelerators and extensions which access content in the browser window.

As you might expect, there are some in the Linux and open source community that don't necessarily agree with Shaver, but they certainly understand his stance in the matter.

One of them is Mozilla Foundation Chairperson Mitchell Baker. She takes a similar line in her blog posting on the issue. Rather than achieving the unification which Google is striving for, in particular with regard to web standards, with Chrome Frame, a browser within a browser leads to greater fragmentation.

And according to Baker, users will even lose control over what used to be their very own browser.

The result will be confusing to say the least, in which users no longer know what's going on, whether it is Chrome or Internet Explorer which is saving their passwords and history, for example.

Google says it has developed Chrome Frame simply because Internet Explorer has problems running its Wave collaboration tool.

Internet users wanting to use Wave in IE have either to install Chrome Frame or use a different browser altogether...

For its part, Microsoft has argued that Chrome Frame raises security issues (!)

Now, do you honestly really believe that? (...) (!)

Google Chrome includes a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. (IE anybody?)

One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the Internet today. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also less memory bloat.

When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager, placing blame where blame belongs...

Google Chrome uses special tabs. Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.

Chrome has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more.

For example, the omnibox also lets you enter “digital camera” if the title of the page you visited was “Canon Digital Camera”. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box. You still need to type the site’s name into the address bar, like “amazon”, and then hit the tab key and enter your search keywords.

As a default, Chrome's homepage presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera. On that page you will see your most visited webpages as nine screenshot thumbnails. To the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs.

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Source: Google.

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