Speed up Internet Explorer(IE) using Chrome Frame

If you are still using IE and looking for ways to speed up your browser then google can help you out.It has recently released a plugin called Chrome Frame to bring Chrome's speedy Javascript engine to Internet Explorer.

You can get the Chrome Frame here and it supports Internet Explorer 6,7 & 8 .If you think your browser will become faster as soon as you download the plugin then you are wrong.
You have to wait till the websites start using Chrome's rendering engine by default.As an end user you can direct the website to use chrome's rendering engine by prefixing "cf:" before "http://" .For example if you use "cf:http://google.com" then it will use the Chrome's rendering engine.



What benefit you get as an end user by using the plugin?
Well ,Your browser speed increases immediately.In future you will also be able to access richer applications in Internet Explorer.

What benefit you get as a Web Developer ?
If you are a web developer then you will be able to deliver richer applications using HTML5.You can write code and expect it to work across both the browsers by forcing the IE users to use Chrome Frame through the addition of a single tag to the top of your page.
Add the following code to start using Google Chrome Frame.
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">
You wont have to spend time for finding work-arounds or making design changes to make it work in IE.You wont have to test your code in two browsers.

Let us look at the disadvantages from end user point of view.
Users will have to wait till the websites start using Chrome Rendering Engine by default.The temporary solution of prefixing "cf:" will not work across all the websites ,because websites will normally rewrite the URL when you start browsing.This is also cumbersome to manually prefix "cf:".

How will Google benefit from this ?
This is quite interesting because Google Wave will be released in few days time .Since Google Wave requires better Java Script support it will create awareness for Chrome by letting the IE users know about it.

A blog post from Google Wave says the following regarding the whole matter.

In the past, the Google Wave team has spent countless hours solely on improving the experience of running Google Wave in Internet Explorer. We could continue in this fashion, but using Google Chrome Frame instead lets us invest all that engineering time in more features for all our users, without leaving Internet Explorer users behind.

It remains to be seen if the Corporate IT departments will allow use of this plugin inside the corporates.

Check the following you tube video to know more about Chrome.