Infrequently Noted

Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.

Chrome Frame Now Stable!

Exactly a year from the original announcement, we've just launched a stable, ready-for-prime-time version of Chrome Frame (with MSI packages). In addition to heroic work by the whole team on improving GCF stability in the face of poorly written extensions, the biggest change in the Stable release is an astounding improvement in cold start performance (greater than 3x faster in many cases). Faster startups mean that your users wait less to experience a better web and that GCF is appropriate for a wide range of applications that can benefit from HTML5 features. Faster starts also mean that JavaScript heavy sites benefit even more from V8 since the engine can start running your code faster, sooner.

Like Chrome, GCF is on the 6 week release cycle, so expect features like per-user install and even faster starts that are arriving in the Dev Channel to become available quickly.

So what are you waiting for? Say no to legacy baggage and start saying yes to HTML5 and the future by adding the GCF header/tag to your sites and apps. It's nearly zero effort. When you're comfortable, you can add a prompt and free yourself to build sites and apps against only the modern web. When you do, you'll see how fast and productive web development can really be. I promise you won't want to go back. Thanks to GCF, you won't have to.