“Today, most people are using modern browsers that support the majority of the latest web technologies. Better yet, the usage of legacy browsers is declining significantly and newer browsers stay up to date automatically, which means the leading edge has become mainstream. Given these factors we’ve decided to retire Chrome Frame, and will cease support and updates for the product in January 2014.” Eh.
I actually use a web service for work that only works properly in Chrome and Firefox.
Since some of our business customers have to access it in order to communicate with us, and many of them are stuck with IE, the only option is to use Chrome Frame (this web service actually requires that in order to function with IE).
Hopefully they’ll “fix” their site to work better with IE, although some of our customers are still stuck using XP and IE7/IE8 for compatibility reasons, so I don’t have high hopes yet.
I actually had to think a bit to remember what Chrome Frame even was, and even them my memory was off. I thought it was just another IE shell/”frame” (yes, I now know it is the Webkit rendering engine as a plug-in for IE). I won’t be missing it–hell, I never even used it.
The percentages by GA were roughly on the company I work for.:
* 50% of all users that are on our site (last month that was about 2 million users) were using chrome.
* 20% were using Firefox.
* 21% were using IE 9 or 10.
* 4% was using IE 6-8.
In the last year a lot of legacy crap has been dropped by users. Also most of our visitors are in this order of OS.
1) Windows 7
2) Windows 8
3) Windows Vista
4) MacOSX
It is a massive difference compared to 2 years ago when I started at the company.
I actually think Chrome Frame was a bad way of supporting high frequency browser updates.
System Admin pro were never going to allow this and those outside of corporate lock-down were going to choose a new browser if they were savvy enough … i.e. their browser is up-2-date.
Edited 2013-06-13 21:17 UTC
That was my feeling, too. If an environment isn’t going to permit the installation of Firefox or Chrome, odds are it’s not going to permit the installation of Chrome Frame either.
It’s not always a “lockdown” thing as much as it’s a “I don’t know how to install multiple browsers and switch between them” thing.
Most of the corporate users I am familiar with have the freedom to install multiple browsers – but often times they’re stuck with some crappy web app that only works on IE7, and so they make that their default browser.
With Chrome Frame, it was pretty much transparent when it was in use – and you felt like you were using the same browser everywhere.
I’m not trying to justify keeping an old IE7 going with Chrome Frame, just explaining how I’ve seen it in use.
I’m cursed with using IE8 on my computer at work.
It makes me unable to use a growing number of sites in the internet and I’m also hitting a brick wall with being rejected because of IE8 without even being given a chance to run a crippled but functionally effective experience on my IE8.
I hate this kick in the ass without letting me suffer my IE8
There’s always telnet.exe if you’re desperate.