Ok so Google has this plug-in that just came out for IE called “Google Chrome Frame” … kinda silly name, i know. So WTF does it do and why is Google doing this? Obviously MS is not happy about it either.
Basically its a plug-in for IE that lets sites opt into using chrome for the rendering engine. This is great since IE is way behind in speed and HTML5 features. At first I wasn’t sure why Google would do this … do they really hate IE that much? Then it became clear. This is their workaround for Google wave which is an html5 app that doesn’t support any version of IE. Well now they can have their cake and eat it too.
For whatever reason people don’t want to switch or can’t switch away from IE or even upgrade for that matter. now there is a bit of light on the horizon for web developers everywhere. while this plugin might not get very wide spread usage it offers us web developers a new option in the way we deliver a web experience to users.
its as simple as adding a single tag to your page
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">
how to use it … well its kinda buggy. here are some things i have discovered so far
- must come close to top of head tag … ?
- must be added to every page
- page must not be cached … ?
- also seems using it in http headers doesn’t work the way the IE7 tag does … ?