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Ask Slashdot: Options After Google Chrome Discontinues NPAPI Support?
An anonymous reader writes: I've been using Google Chrome almost exclusively for more than 3 years. I stopped using Mozilla Firefox because it was becoming bloated and slow, and I migrated all my bookmarks etc. to Chrome. Now Chrome plans to end NPAPI support — which means that I will not be able to access any sites that use Java, and I need this for work. I tried going back to Firefox for a couple of days but it still seems slow — starting it takes time, even the time taken to load a page seems more than Chrome. So what are my options now? Export all my bookmarks and go back to Mozilla Firefox and just learn to live with the performance drop? Or can I tweak Firefox performance in any way? FWIW, I am on a Windows 7 machine at work.
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Actual industrial scale applications require static typing. Scripting which is done by kiddies doesn't.
Is Golang typed? How about Swift? Or Rust?
See the difference?
I've never coded in Java before so I can't comment on the language itself, but I am always seeing security vulnerabilities related to it all the time. Furthermore, new versions of Java seem to break older applications (for example, when I was taking a CCNA Security course, we had to use Cisco SDM, which broke with newer versions of Java, and required that we install insecure and older copies (which in itself is a major chore as they are often hard to find and in many cases refuse to install properly.)
That said, I think that if Java (at least, the one maintained by Oracle) finally dies, then the world will be better off.
Same with Flash too.
This is demonstrably false. While one can write good/bad applications in any language, the set of insecure programs in an untyped language is a superset of the set of insecure programs in a typed language of similar syntax.
This is only a problem because you insist that everything happen in one piece of software. That is not a requirement, or at least not one you shared with us.
If you want to complete a task that requires a particular piece of software, use the required software for that task. Then use whatever software you want for all other tasks. This will not only let you use the browser you want for most things, but will let you optimize the NPAPI browser for that particular use without worrying about security and updates and whatnot.
Everyone get ready for IE becoming the corporate standard again.
All of which said, I was under the impression Chrome ultimately was going to implement another API instead, rather than abandoning the concept of plug-ins altogether. It seems hard to believe that Chrome is completely closed.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Where were you for the last year and a half??
Microsoft will be killing the same plugins in I believe the next version of IE, these plugins are security holes, removing them makes browsers significantly more secure.
this is a good move for all browser creators to take, anyone with old plugins no longer supported will just have to re-write them, in the case of many Java apps they should have been full blown applications in the first place, not plugins in a web browser.