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.”
