Google Chrome Frame is an open source plug-in that brings Google Chrome’s open web technologies and JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. With Google Chrome Frame you can right away use HTML 5 tags such as canvas and other technologies that aren’t yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, or 9.One can take advantage of JavaScript performance improvements to make the apps faster and more responsive. Before we move ahead, please note that there is huge difference between chrome and chrome Frame.
The reason for Google to come up with the Chrome Frame ideas is a pretty interesting. As far I remember, it all started with Google Wave. Google Wave had HTML5 feature which Google engineers spend around 3-4 days to make it work in IE. They succeeded to do so by innovation of Google Frame for IE.
You can detect whether or not your users have installed Google Chrome Frame by adding a single tag to your pages.
- If Google Chrome Frame is not installed, you can direct your users to an installation page.
- If Google Chrome Frame is installed, it detects the tag you added and works automatically.
For all the above to happen, you just need to have the following tag in <head>
You may also enable the Chrome Frame site wide by using web.config. The syntax is given below.
The similar syntax for apache server is given below
BrowserMatch chromeframe gcf
Header append X-UA-Compatible "chrome=1" env=gcf
The IE uses the same meta tag to control the rendering engine. If you happened to use both together you need to use following syntax.
Conditional Chrome Frame Activation
To control the usage of chrome Frame with respect to browser version one can do so by using X-UA-Compatible header values. Below are the possible values
chrome=1 – Always active
chrome=IE7 – Active for IE major version 7 or lower
chrome=IE8 – Active for IE major version 8 or lower
Lastly you can also make the chrome Frame to deduct from server side. The complete guide for the same is available here .