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Firefox's Blocked-By-Default Java Isn't Going Down Well
JG0LD writes "The Firefox web browser will, henceforth, require users to manually activate Java objects on sites that they visit, Mozilla has confirmed. This even affects up-to-date versions of Java, which you can see on the block list. The change is aimed at improving security and moving away from a dependence on proprietary plug-ins, but critics say it will cause untold headaches for developers, admins and less-technical end-users. "
Users hate authorizing things, and become trained drones blindly okaying everything anyway.
As security models go, it's a poor one.
They should probably get their heads checked, why are they making Java apps for webpages still?
Having problems for the past hour with cursed Java on my Mac. Really pisses me off that my Insteon controller absolutely requires it to update the system!!!
I'm not a developer, but I'm pretty savvy with computers. So the first time I got that message, I went and updated Java. Fixed it, right? Nope. So I clicked around, and finally accidentally clicked on the little red icon up in the menu bar. Success! Now it gave me an option to run it. Which popped up another window asking for permission. Dear Firefox: You have a small portion of the browser market. Making yourself a nuisance by breaking big pieces of the web is not intelligent. It just drives people to chrome, or IE. Especially everyday users who don't want to screw around and just want things to work.
They are coded for IE 6 and maybe up to IE 8 if it is very cutting edge with new css 2.1 glory.
In other words banks and corporate apps. The rest have moved on to flash and ajax last decade.
Webapps in java were a way to makup the shortcumings in Netscaoe 3 to imitate html 5 and ajax today. Obsolete and done
http://saveie6.com/
moving away from a dependence on proprietary plug-ins
Like the browsers themselves?
Hey maybe we can get all the people at Adobe and Oracle laid off the same week. Wouldn't that be fun?
Isn't it great how the web is moving away from "proprietary plug-ins" and straight into proprietary mobile devices?
And look at the web users cheer. The people who built the web would recoil in horror at what you have allowed to happen to the Internet.
I give it five years, maybe six, and the Internet will be completely walled off by a McDonalds logo.
Firefox will be exactly what Scott Adams predicted...
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-03-25/
Applets may be "The Debil", but they also fill a need that can't be filled by Flash or HTML5.
Mozilla needs to get over themselves.
Java is huge in the business back end, but front end Java just leaves a bad taste in the mouth of users. Slow, bloated, painful to use and kinda salty.
Yay me!
We'll see. I've been running the FlashBlock plugin for years (to manually enable flash elements) with VERY FEW adverse effects. I doubt having to manually activate Java elements will be any worse.
sig: sauer
There are two ways to improve security - lock out the user, or educate them.
Locking out the user is great - but it only works on NEW products, and if you don't have competitors. The reason it works well on NEW products is that the user isn't conditioned on what to expect. Remember, trying to change how people use their computer is an uphill battle. It works well when the do not believe they have alternatives.
Educating the user is harder, but that is the real fix. You aren't improving security by saying 'As responsible devs, our software won't do what you want'. Instead, make a two minute video showing them how $technology is flawed, and make them watch it ONCE. Then, let the choose whether to block $technology or live with it. Because right now they get fed up with Firefox (NOT Java), and click the little blue e.
And yes, it isn't a great hassle to keep using FF when you allow users to "click to allow $applet". But the pain is that I need to look at the little red icon in the address bar to permanently enable something. You might say that if I can't handle this additional step, I shouldn't be making a choice on whether to run an applet or not (but that is a bad road to head down). You could have just made a popup when I run an applet that says "Do you want to remember this setting?" - it doesn't fix the security problem, but the current solution doesn't either. At least this way, I don't feel frustrated at my browser for someone else's (Oracle, in this case) screw ups.
Developers need to get used to the idea that they can't count on either flash or java being present on the client end. That's just the way it is.
That is correct.
Except for the fact that there are eleventy bazillion websites already in existence which rely on one or more of these programs and they aren't going to change and they aren't going to go away.
I've got Java blocked by default, Javascript, cookies, flash, ads, and trackers blocked by default too.
Never causes me more than a few seconds bother.
This is overblown like crazy
an anti-vote button. I am willing to bet the vast majority of users would disagree with this move.
Firefox's handling of Bugzilla has been terrible for years. It is the primary reason I switched from Firefox to Chrome. I was tired of the one-way communication, especially coming from a so-called open-source project.
Firefox has now increases the work load, now I'll have to press that damm warning button everytime.
My laptop went bad about a week or so ago, and I wiped it and have been reinstalling. One item is a VPN connection client that allows me into my University network from home, so I can access software licenses and work on my labs. This is for an MS degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering. Firefox forbade that from installing on my recovering laptop (Win 7 Ultimate 64) and so I was forced to use MSIE just to get my link installed and configured. Sorry Mozilla, but you did prevent me from doing something tremendously important to me, and there was not a thing to click on to activate Java in this case.
The whole point of all that byte-code stuff and just-in-time compilation was to keep Java programs in a sandbox where they couldn't affect the rest of the system.
FAIL.
How to enable Java if its been blocked
So, now, the lastest version of Java (7.45) is considered outdated.
Absolutely brain-dead decision.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Oracle Java has ALSO decided, due to the persistent security problems due at least in part to having concurrent (i.e., old) versions installed (and the fact that the largest exploit kits have used Java as one of their main vectors for some time now, alongside Adobe Reader of course) to disable Java plugins in the browser by default in recent updates.
So, what's the big deal? This is the correct decision from a security perspective. I can't remember the last time I saw someone on the World Wide Web actually USE a Java applet for good, rather than for evil. And I'd have noticed, because even after all these years, it still runs like an absolute dog. It's the kind of thing you might use on a local application (such as Minecraft, which is what I think probably most people who still have it installed use it for now, albeit they'd likely have the 64-bit version which wouldn't have a working browser plugin in a 32-bit browser anyway!) or an intranet site (which is your administrator's problem, to re-enable it for that site only, or to use a different browser for the web and the intranet, which you can totally do and is good practice).
I've got many other criticisms about Firefox recently from a security and performance perspective - let's face it, it's just not the zippy, efficient browser it used to be, even relatively-speaking, it's lost its mojo and the security team have a reputation for having a slow, and fairly arsey, response - but this seems to be the right decision and they should be lauded for it. IE has also done it, as has Chrome.
I've had about enough of Mozilla's arrogance and stupidity.
There are forks. Try Palemoon.
8 out of 10 browser exploits in the wild get in through Java.
Yeah! How dare they act in defense of users against a technology notable for its repeated exploits! They should learn humility and how to act intelligently, like Oracle!
Virtually any bug in Firefox's Bugzilla that isn't purely technical ("frob the whizzlork") has some amount of complaining after it's been fixed, and maybe before it's been fixed, and while it's being fixed. This is pretty light in the grand scheme of things; you should see the pages and pages of griping about the status bar.
Whitelisting by site is exactly the correct behavior for an untrustworthy plugin. Give it a week or two for everyone to get used to this radical change in technology (push a button?!) and we'll all forget about it.
From Link:
First I've heard that Java 5 and 6 are not considered dead yet.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
You obviously know what you're talking about. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...
I use firefox and haven't encountered a singled issue with java not working... that is because I can't even remember the last time I saw a site with an applet.
Really this is a non-issue that will go the same way as active-x support. Only people in Korea will care.
If you are still developing/depending on applets, 1995 called they want their stupid ideas back. What next, your mail link is an animated gif?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> I don't get it why people hate Java applets so much they want them to go altogether.
Because Java applets are a honking big security hole, and currently the most-often-used attack-vector to take over unsuspecting users' machines. See http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=5&product_id=1526&version_id=&page=1&hasexp=0&opdos=0&opec=0&opov=0&opcsrf=0&opgpriv=0&opsqli=0&opxss=0&opdirt=0&opmemc=0&ophttprs=0&opbyp=0&opfileinc=0&opginf=0&cvssscoremin=0&cvssscoremax=6.99&year=0&month=0&cweid=0&order=1&trc=35&sha=d158a5520a2bc52f7443268daaab5851ced00564 for a list of recent problems.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
My mother learned in 10 minutes how to enable java script with noscript/flash. She is not technical savvy , but I explained it to her at her level. She got it. I expect a good slice of those using FF now "not getting it" are those not wanting to learn.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Must we have this troll comment every time someone mentions Java applets?
Java applets are commonly used, as they have been for many years. According to this Chromium blog post from September 2013, 8.9% of Chrome users had launched something using the Java plugin in the past month.
Among the common uses that get mentioned every time this discussion comes up are: public access to banking and government systems in various countries, games, user interfaces for devices (scientific equipment, network infrastructure, all kinds of examples), access to local hardware devices that aren't yet available via newer technologies, some popular teleconferencing and VPN software, and little demo graphics written by academics to go on their web sites a decade ago that are still just as relevant today.
In other words, just because you don't use Java applets yourself or know when they're still useful, don't assume everyone else is in the same situation.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yeah, they are. Guess why.
Sent from my iPhone
Well, Windows was the biggest security hole for the longest time but you didn't see FF refusing to run on it.
You do understand that without those Bad Things you so hate, there probably wouldn't be a Web worth saving, right? Someone has to pay the bills, and if you're not going to pay for content, you're not going to accept advertising, you want full privacy and security when using services you're not paying anything for... Who is going to write the cheque?
I hate DRM and spammy ads and privacy invasions as much as anyone -- more that most, probably, given that I really do give up on some things most people accept because I refuse to support the intrusions. But still, we live in the real world, and you can't just wish Bad Things away without proposing Better Alternatives. BTW, "everything I want should be free and unencumbered" is not a viable Better Alternative.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The number of support e-mails in my inbox this week from those users suggests that they aren't too happy about being "defended" in this way.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Not only a security problem, that's just the surface, but the smothering care of Oracle plus the whole 1999 feeling makes for a combination that made this step necessary years ago.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I run SeaMonkey (which is using most of the Firefox core and will probably inherit this Java block feature if its not already there) and I dont have Java installed at all. I have yet to find a single web site I use that needs Java (on the rare occasion I have found one there is usually an alternative for what I want to do anyway :)
So where do you intend to go ? It won't be Chrome, because they've already said they'll remove the complete plugin API.
New things are always on the horizon
No, but it was more secure than IE at that time.
New things are always on the horizon
Chrome will remove the whole plug-in API:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/09/NPAPI-Depricated
So it won't be able to run Java at all.
You could probably download, decompress and process that in Javascript. You might find that if you optimize certain parts with asm.js that it would be about 2x as slow as in native or Java. That might, or might not be acceptable.
Anyway, you can even turn on Java on a per-site basis in Firefox.
New things are always on the horizon
html5 can replace flash, check this link on how firefox can replace flash
still not perfect, but getting better. it will replace flash, just like PDF.js can replace PDF plugins in browsers
Higuita
I guess they can even run javascript inside the same VM, so a unified approach.
In fact they already have a VM they use for javascript (the whole -Monkey family), and their VM is even able to compile to native. Not only JIT, but even more so for specially crafted javascript called ASM.js (it standard Javascript, that only use those features which translate nicely into machine code: doesn't use dynamic typing, only uses safe typing, etc.) enabling near-native speed for some code.
In theory, it should be possible to create a process which recompiles java byte-code into ASM.js and feeds it into the VM for nearly-native speeds.
In practice, Java is a huge pile of complicated mess, and thus lots of applications end-up being highly dependent on Sun/Oracle/IcedTea Java and not run well on any other implementation (like GCJ), mostly because of missing classes or whatever. So you'll end with something as good at running Java as currently Gnash is at running Flash - more or less works broadly on theory, but breaks on lots of specific cases. Given the current market for java (bazillions of inhouse applet in businesses) it is going to be hard to test every case. Whereas Gnash only breaks on some stupid casual games and video player for cute kittens (and pr0n), a Java-reimplemented-in-the-browser would probably break business intranets and core business applications.
The only possible solution, is implementing only the bytecode execution itself (transcode Java bytecode into ASM.js - like pluging GCJ to LLVM to emscripten to odinmonkey, for example). Ant then re-use the opensourced classes from IcedTea and co. But then you're again running the original java with all the original bugs, only on a different platform. If a bug in the official libraries enable an attacker to steal encryption keys from other apps, this is still going to put your bank's e-banking applet at risk, no matter if said applet runs on an uncrashable Mozilla OdinMonkey VM or the official Oracle JVM.
And Google recently developed an efficient sandbox called NaCl, so why not follow them? They could even run Java inside NaCl to add another layer of security.
NaCl isn't really a sandbox. It's only a special way to package executable native code, with limitation of what said code can do. It's some security restrictions (NaCl applications can only run a subset of the whole API available to normal applications and aren't allowed to run some instructions), stacked on top of the pre-existing Google Sandboxes (each into its own process)
Even if you use a JVM running as a NaCl application, you've only partially solved the stability problems (JVM crashes less, and when it crashes, it doesn't take the whole browser with it). You haven't solved security (obscure stupid java classes leaks encryption keys or password due to bad design).
Also note that NaCl is completely against Mozilla's approach and will never get implemented. Mozilla simply doesn't want binary code, because it's limiting (NaCl only runs on x86 and ARM), and still a security problem (even if it's much better then ActiveX, you're still sending executable code from the internet into a browser).
Still PNaCl is probably where everything will be heading: this time it's not the actual binary which is shipped, but the previous step in the compilation process - the LLVM bytecode. Google can still compile it into NaC (and run better security checks at compile time). And mozilla can use it to compile it with emcripten into ASM.js. It's now much more portable (you could run it on MIPS for exemple), and much more secure (when compiling ASM.js, memory access are translated into read/writes to/from an array instead of random memory writes).
Hell, they could even run the complete browser inside NaCl, so Firefox would run on Chrome too :)
If you want, you can even use Firefox to run one of the virtual machines written in Javascript, boot a virtual Linux distribution and run Chrome on it.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Both our KVM and NAS at work use Java as their interface. In both cases the reason is the same: to support management from arbitrary clients running any OS. They don't want to require you to install a program just to manage them and they want to easily support Windows, Linux, Mac, and so on. However the interface needs to be highly interactive to be useful. In the case of the KVM it actually has to stream video that it compresses from various sources. So Java it is.
These are some outdated devices from yesteryear, they are both current products on sale right now. The KVM is a Minicom Smart 216IP Switch, and NAS is a Dell Equallogic. While these may not be the world's highest end products, they are real enterprise products and they are both on sale right now.
While I don't like Java, particularly its insecurity, trying to pretend like it's some relic of a bygone era that we no longer need is silly. If you do systems administration, Java is something that you are going to run into quite a bit. I don't have the choice of "just don't use it" or something like that.
[...] but critics say it will cause untold headaches for developers, admins and less-technical end-users.
The few dozen of the "developers, admins" who still insist on using applet should grow up and stop torturing the "less-technical end-users."
My company would have been impacted (search in documentation is a Java applet, because documentation should be also usable locally, without a web server) if not for never managing to approve FireFox or Chrome because of their version carousel. Ironically, Opera got approved shortly before they have also picked up the rolling releases games.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
A PPAPI version of Java depends on someone creating it.
I doubt the Chromium developers will do it.
New things are always on the horizon
I uninstalled Java because of the constant security issues almost a year ago. I haven't noticed any issues with the web sites I need to use since and have been overall happier. I realize that this won't work for everyone, but this change in FF is a good opportunity to see what the impact would be if you did.
Javascript is killing everything. Now it's fairly standard to have 3 or 4 or 5 levels of Javascript with dozens of objects. It's choking everything to death. Time to fight back
Now do this with JavaScript (at least when it comes from a different host than the page being viewed).
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
but critics say it will cause untold headaches for developers, admins and less-technical end-users.
Is this less or more headaches than the constant barrage of malware leveraging Java? Aside from exploits, the fake security scan authors seem to love using Java as well.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
what you're saying makes my head hurt.
you know what those java guys are now coding for? ANDROID, you know that googzilla operating system.. omg go jump in a river or something.
it's not the language that was the problem it was the shit implementation of the java plugin and the shit politics which led to the poor integration back in the day with it and browsers so because of those politics we ended up getting a java plugin for which they taught to code wrong(making long load times, it's possible to code applets that load like a snap). and thanks to those shit politics we got javascript. java integrated properly instead of javascript would be so much more proper....
go smile the smile of stupid under a bridge, in that river, while apps written in java are now in hands of more people than windows api.....
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You use JavaScript. It has libraries to download/decompress stuff, and can process things really well. Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't make it exotically strange and esoteric.
The last security change to FF broke PDF's. Now Java.
I'm not looking forward to this.
If the people objecting to the new default knew the circumstances around the decision, they wouldn't be objecting to it.
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Exactly. When the CEO can't access the site from his wife's iPad, it all moves to JavaScript pretty quickly.
I would argue that you shouldn't do this, period. If you need to download data, just provide a link to the data in HTML. The user can open the file however they want, which gets you around the horrendous security implications of what you're doing now.
Who the fuck uses applets anymore?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
8 out of 10 browser exploits in the wild get in through Java.
83.7% of statistics are invented.
On most of my systems, Java has been uninstalled. One system has it installed, but the browsers are not allowed to use it.
I haven't found a site that requires Java that I need yet. If I find one, I'll probably look for an alternative, or temporarily enable Java.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
Mismodded, ignore
Mentioning JavaScript and "ASM" (presumably not standing for assembly)
Indeed, ASM.js in not assembly.
It's a subset of javascript, more precisely, its that specific part of Javascript which maps nicely to concept which are easy to compile into machine code.
For example it doesn't relly on dynamic typing (Instead it uses type-tagging to clearly mark which variables contain which data type).
It doesn't use Javascript managed memory handling and garbage collector, it simply use a huge array as a stand-in for virtual RAM,
Also only use a specific subset of Javascript API which can be mapped to regular C/C++ API (use WebGL as a stand-in for OpenGL ES)
etc.
Then the latest Firefox javascript machine (OdinMonkey, the succesor of SpiderMonkey, TracerMonkey and JaeggerMonkey) is able to use all this hints and compile this thing as native code and then execute that at nearly native speed.
Now you might see why it's called ASM.js: it's a small wink to the fact that, from a C-compiler's point of view, it's a concept not too distant from assembler. It's still the language that the compiler spits out that will end up being transcoded into machine code (except that ASM.js isn't specific to any CPU architecture, that the machine code gets transcoded inside the browser, and the ASM.js syntax doesn't look like classical assembler mneumonic, nor like modern IR bytecode).
As it is still JavaScript, it still can be used in any other browser. If the browser support type tracing and JITing, it can still benefit some of the advantages of ASM.js (like its type tagging) and run ASM.js code not to slow.
The intended purpose is not writing apps directly into ASM.js (That would be cumbersome given the weird JS dialect), but use it as an intermediate into which actual applications (for exemple a game written in C/C++) are compiled before shipping to browsers, while both leveraging available optimisation (JIT, typetracing, or even pure machinecode compilation) and staying ECMAscript compliant.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The Internet is a war zone. Not running some sort of script-blocker is like flying through an asteroid belt with your shield down.
Microsoft lulled users into poor security practices with "just works". Java is just too vulnerable to not have some kind of click-to-play or white-list.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Wow, there seems to be a bug in the Slashdot engine which causes your link to break the layout. On Chrome it spans across the right side of the page, creating a wide empty grey area.
Effectively this site is blocked if you are using FireFox. and that's why I keep IE and Safari and Chrome and ....
great plan....
I predict a plugin to whitelist sites before long....
or, to outright "fix" this problem....
I could write something witty for my sig, but instead wrote this...
If it's a problem for some users that it's not on per default, why not just add a plugin with a whitelist? It can't be that hard.
Noscript et al already does the reverse.
Clicking on the "Do Not Enter" icon for the Java plugin pops up a "Firefox has prevented the unsafe plugin "Java(TM) .. from running.." There's a link provided called "What's the risk" (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/p463) that 404's.
So they won't even let you know why it's unsafe, you just have to take their word for it.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
PDF.js is unbelievably bad at font rendering and rendering in general. (Compared to Okular and whatever backend it uses.)
Hopefully Mozilla have some metrics for the number of users who switched to FF (where PDF.js was added as default) and immediately switched to the system PDF viewer. What a collosal waste of JS code.
HAND.
Firefox 24 fixed 7 critical security vulnerabilities, on top of the 4 fixed 6 weeks earlier in Firefox 23, and 4 more fixed 6 weeks before that in Firefox 22, and 3 more 6 weeks earlier still in Firefox 21, and so on. Within the past year there have been Firefox releases that fixed as many as 12 critical vulnerabilities.
By your argument, since I have no reason to believe the latest Firefox will have no known vulnerabilities for the entire time that release is current, we should probably just declare Firefox to be dangerous by default and have it prompt users before opening every page from a site they didn't already OK explicitly.
In fact, Microsoft should just flag Firefox as known insecure software and push out a Windows update that warns users about this every time they try to run it, even if Firefox itself is already doing that. And then Microsoft should push out another update a few weeks later that fully removes Firefox from everyone's system for their own safety, and they should kill support completely for anyone who doesn't install that update within the next few months.
Isn't it lucky that Microsoft have an alternative technology that they'd prefer us all to use instead, which they can generously offer to us when they shut down what we've chosen to use previously?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It does the same thing on Mobile Safari.
By using a Firefox plug-in called NoScript (there are others). Pretty interesting being able to view and manually kick adware to the curb. By globally revoking permission to scripts from domains like atdt, it's possible to greatly clean up your browser experience. And you always have a half-decent idea what's going on. I think this is a great idea on Mozilla's part, although it would certainly be appropriate to make this an opt-in feature.
...is the one not installed. Otherwise, don't make it a pain the ass to run when one is presented with, say...an enterprise app like ADP which requires it. This is sure to push Admins to move away from Firefox and give IE and Chrome more users.
Bearded Dragon
html5 can replace flash, check this link on how firefox can replace flash
still not perfect, but getting better. it will replace flash, just like PDF.js can replace PDF plugins in browsers
For those who don't know, PDF.js is the "built in PDF viewer" in recent Firefox builds. It's not an Adobe-provided thing. It's a new Firefox feature to convert PDF to HTML5 using Javascript using a mozilla foundation "community driven" javascript project.
I gleefully support the goals of the project.
And yet I regret to report that from my work-related test cases, PDF.js is badly broken with long technical documents with diagrams. :-(
For those who don't know, you can disable it!
1. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.
2. Press the big button to bypass the warning.
3. In the Filter bar, paste pdfjs.disabled
4. In the search results, double-click pdfjs.disabled to set its value to true
5. Restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.
Result on Firefox 24 on Xubuntu 12.04 LTS: "This browser is currently unsupported. Please download Firefox 22 for an optimal experience." This recommendation to use an older browser contradicts Epic Citadel HTML5 FAQ, which "recommend[s] the latest Firefox public release".
USB Token as an image device.... WTF? How does one expose that using Javascript?
I believe it's called "getUserMedia" and treating the signature tablet as a camera.
An article published by the U.S. Small Business Administration claims that people are doing signatures on touch screens. Let me guess how it'd be exposed to JavaScript: A digitizer feeds a stream of (x, y) drag events to the script on the page. The page renders these drag events to a canvas. This would work with a standard Wacom tablet on a PC or with the touch screen in a smartphone or tablet.
Let me know when Safari for iPhone supports the Stream API, WebGL, Gamepad API, and IndexedDB.
no need for that, you can go to the firefox preferences -> applications, search for pdf and choose from the default "preview in firefox" to "open with plugin" or "open to external application"
Higuita
In any enterprise implementation this will prevent any system architect or admin from permitting the installation of Firefox just from a cost standpoint. They just don't have time for the flood of support calls they'll get.
You're missing the points that I was alluding to, and apparently one of the moderators had to. You could have replaced iPhone with whatever of phone you wanted.
Listen, the web evolves and evolves according to standards. All proprietary lock-ins will naturally be kicked out eventually. The writing has been on the wall for a long, long time. Not only are Java applets dead, I could say Java as a language is dead. When I say "dead", it's not cost beneficial. Treat it as a pet language and move on.
My post was +5 flamebait because it was open-ended and moderators and posters can come to their own conclusions. I guess that means I was the smartest person in this thread. yippie! fuck what.
WebGL will be supported soon.
Listen, the web evolves and evolves according to standards.
And because Android allows multiple competing web browsers to compete for standards support, it picks up support for these standards sooner than iPhone. Firefox for Android appears to support WebGL as of version 24 according to this table. Safari and Safari wrappers, on the other hand, support standards only once Apple makes the business decision to no longer deliberately exclude them. For example, iOS supports WebGL, but only in iAds approved by Apple. The limits of Safari and Safari wrappers appear calculated to encourage application developers to buy an additional computer and a developer license and develop a native application instead of not buying a Mac, not buying a developer license, and developing a web application instead.
All proprietary lock-ins will naturally be kicked out eventually.
The universe will die of heat death "eventually". To exaggerate slightly less, anyone can make an iPhone "eventually" once copyright in iOS expires. To exaggerate even less, if I eat "eventually", I will die of starvation first. People making applications for the phones that exist now need to eat now. I was referring to the foreseeable future, not 95 years from now.