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Firefox Support For NPAPI Plugins Ends Next Year (mozilla.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-time-like-the-future dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla announced that it will follow the lead of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge in phasing out support for NPAPI plugins. They expect to have it done by the end of next year. "Plugins are a source of performance problems, crashes, and security incidents for Web users. ... Moreover, since new Firefox platforms do not have to support an existing ecosystem of users and plugins, new platforms such as 64-bit Firefox for Windows will launch without plugin support." Of course, there's an exception: "Because Adobe Flash is still a common part of the Web experience for most users, we will continue to support Flash within Firefox as an exception to the general plugin policy. Mozilla and Adobe will continue to collaborate to bring improvements to the Flash experience on Firefox, including on stability and performance, features and security architecture." There's no exception for Java, though.

6 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is this goodbye? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wrong type of plugin. This is about plugins like Flash, such as ... uh ... I dunno, Adobe PDF reader? The Java plugin, I guess. Things like that. Basically nothing anyone will miss.

    Of course, they're also killing support for NoScript and requestpolicy, except that happens earlier than "the end of next year." The timeline for support for those to be removed is mid-2016, as I recall.

  2. Those are add-ons, not plugins. by WD · · Score: 4, Informative

    Add-ons will continue to work. This is talking about NPAPI plugins.

  3. Re:Is this goodbye? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Plug-ins != add-ons

  4. Re:Question by Sigma+7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    What is NPAPI ?

    NPAPI is the legacy plugin system used by browsers that allows webpages to serve executable content without the user having to download a file.

    This system is used by Flash, Unity, Java, and various unimportant plugins. Of these, Flash has an arrangement with Adobe, Unity has an exit strategy, and Java is completely neutered as it was for quite some time. The unimportant plugins are unimportant (and if they were, they'd have fixed it by now.)

    and does this have anything to do with the add=ons and plug=ins specific to Firefox and Seamonkey
    SAome of which break every time they put out a new version of FF

    Those are extensions, which is completely different.

  5. Plugins != extensions by Samare · · Score: 3, Informative

    NPAPI plugins are not to be confused with Firefox extensions.

    The fact that they have both been found in about:addons for some time now is a source of confusion.

  6. Re:Question by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Informative

    What is NPAPI ?

    Jesus you're lazy: NPAPI

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .