IE 6 Frame Plugin
October 16th, 2009
From the moment I heard about Google Chrome Frame, the idea bothered me. Here is the situation:
- Many big companies still run IE 6
- These companies depend on legacy web apps that only work in IE 6
- Because so many companies are stuck on IE 6, everybody else has trouble moving forward with modern web sites
The Google Fix
Google Chrome Frame runs inside of IE. It allows IE users to access modern web sites, so long as those sites include this tag:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">
This is a clever workaround and is probably the best Google can do.
What Bothers Me
The workaround is backwards. It means 99% of your web usage remains stuck in old fashioned IE 6, treating modern web sites as special cases. Instead, I propose that Microsoft do exactly the opposite of what Google did.
Microsoft should create an IE 6 Frame. It would work like this:
- Everybody installs a modern web browser. IE 8, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.
- Companies with ancient, mission critical IE 6 proprietary web sites could install the IE 6 Frame plugin.
- Most web sites would use the modern browser. Old web sites — ones that only work in IE 6 — would run in the IE 6 Frame plugin.
I believe this approach would be far more beneficial. You want the old crappy stuff to be the “special case” that runs in a plugin.
It’s called IETab. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419 There will be a version for Google Chrome soon enough. (Safari has no meaningful plugin model.)
The problem is that IETab requires users to make a big change (switch browsers, configure IETab) rather than a small one (click here; a few websites are now different). Remember, most users still don’t know what a browser is! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ
Additionally, the IT deployment story for IETab is a shambles; there would need to be one-click MSIs to deploy it to an entire Active Directory domain. Firefox doesn’t even HAVE an official MSI installer; some dudes make the Firefox MSI in their spare time. (And do you trust them?)
While I think your proposal of making IE6 run inside IE8 is OK, how are these legacy applications going to indicate they need to run in the IE6 version? I suppose a list of sites could be configured to trigger the switch.
While I think that Google Chrome Frame is not the “right” solution it is one that is easily implemented because only sites that wanted Google Chrome Frame functionality (new sites) need the change and everything else remains unchanged. Since it is the solution that is implemented, it is the solution. Doing it the right way is unlikely to happen because everything else has to be changed or listed.
Just my 2 cents.
Great idea.
But I think it might be hard to configure the IE6-only sites to cough up the appropriate meta tag. These internal sites might be driven by closed source webapps whose support contract has already expired. Or they could be complex giant EJB 1.1 apps.
And what about a configuration like the “do not use proxy for the following website” ?
If this is used for intranet, it should be easy to do.
This would be a good solution, but I doubt it’s feasible for Microsoft to maintain a separate plugin for each major browser, and I’m not sure how other browsers would feel about this (Microsoft is not happy about Chrome Frame and Mozilla has spoken out against it as well).
That said, I don’t like Google’s solution either – they should be encouraging users/corporations/etc to upgrade their browser, and what Chrome Frame does instead is encourage further usage of IE6. I have a post about this as well: http://www.dan-menard.com/2009/10/07/does-chrome-frame-do-more-harm-than-good/.
Sometimes the issue is that IT management doesn’t cares one heck about which navigator are they using, ’cause if they’d have legacy apps they could run Internet Explorer using the compatibility mode which makes this pages run or even use Firefox or if they were a little bit more careful use and develop standards based pages and not having this discussion at all.
IETab would be useless if the IE version installed on the user’s PC is IE7 or above. Then it would just be an IE Frame, rather than an IE6 Frame. Another thing to note is that IE6 mode is not available in IE8. Back when IE6 was released, a lot of the current “standards” did not exist; in fact, IE6 *was* the standard with a market share very close to 100%, so it would make sense to develop for just IE6.