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Google's "Chrome Frame" plugin for IE no longer requires admin rights

blog.chromium.org

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Re: Google's "Chrome Frame" plugin for IE no longer requires admin rights

#2
Nice to see a bit more of the tech behind how they did it, albeit it's admittedly not much.

Side note, from their FAQs:

Is Google Chrome Frame open-source?

Google Chrome Frame is built from open source code in the Chromium project just like Google Chrome.

Does this sound like a non-answer to anyone else, or is it just me?

Re: Google's "Chrome Frame" plugin for IE no longer requires admin rights

#3
post #2

Nice to see a bit more of the tech behind how they did it, albeit it's admittedly not much. Side note, from their FAQs: Is Google Chrome Frame open-source? Google Chrome Frame is built from open source code in the Chromium project just like Google Chrome. Does this sound like a non-answer to anyone else, or is it just me?

Does this sound like a non-answer to anyone else, or is it just me?

Meh. Depends where you're coming from. I can see that being helpful for someone that doesn't realize it's just powering IE with Chrome behind the scenes, and wants access to the code for the rendering engine... but someone smart enough to want the source code probably wants the actual stuff that's working with IE under the hood..

Re: Google's "Chrome Frame" plugin for IE no longer requires admin rights

#6
post #2

Nice to see a bit more of the tech behind how they did it, albeit it's admittedly not much. Side note, from their FAQs: Is Google Chrome Frame open-source? Google Chrome Frame is built from open source code in the Chromium project just like Google Chrome. Does this sound like a non-answer to anyone else, or is it just me?

Not really. You can view the source code for both Chrome, Chrome OS and Chrome Frame in their repo: http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome_frame...

As a side note, after having looked at the code for a few minutes, it appears they're doing some clever things with the Chrome Frame helper program: (tidy) DLL injection into Internet Explorer, together with dynamic BHO loading using the windowing API and the IWebBrowser2 interface (see http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome_frame... ).

The "right" way to do this is to register your BHO dll through regsvr32 (I believe this creates a registry entry as well.) If you have Administrative rights, the installer does this for you, and Internet Explorer will do everything on its own from there on.

It surprises me that their workaround actually works. One would think that aspects such as DLL injection and API interfacing would be blocked for non-administrative users. The code could actually prove inspirational for malware writers. I still wonder how they load the helper program at startup. Probably using a service, but setting a new service would require Administrative privileges, I believe...

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