Google has released a free plug-in for Internet Explorer that forces Microsoft’s browser to use Chrome rendering engine, increasing JavaScript performance by almost eight times as much.

The Chrome Frame plug –in (http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe ) works on all versions of Internet Explorer from 6 higher, and also allows websites that use HTML 5 to be displayed properly. Web developers have to explicitly choose choose to support the plug-in ability by inserting a Chrome Frame specific tag into the HTML code for their web pages, telling Internet Explorer to load the plug-in .

If the plug-in isn’t found , a message can be displayed telling the user to download Chrome Frame. On pages without the tag, Internet Explorer shouldn’t behave any differently. Google released Chrome Frame so that users still using older web browsers can use web applications that demand the latest technologies. Microsoft isn’t happy about the release and has said that the plug-in could make its browser less secure.