Google Removes Plugin Controls From Chrome, Reports Claim (ghacks.net)

An anonymous reader shares a Ghacks report: Google made a change in Chrome 57 that removes options from the browser to manage plugins such as Google Widevine, Adobe Flash, or the Chrome PDF Viewer. If you load chrome://plugins in Chrome 56 or earlier, a list of installed plugins is displayed to you. You can use it, among other things, to disable plugins that you don't require. While you can do the same for some plugins, Flash and PDF Viewer, using Chrome's Settings, the same is not possible for the DRM plugin Widevine, and any other plugin Google may add to Chrome in the future. Starting with Chrome 57, that option is no longer available. This means essentially that Chrome users won't be able to disable -- some -- plugins anymore, or even list the plugins that are installed in the web browser. Please note that this affects Google Chrome and Chromium.Further report on BetaNews.

Comments

If it is an embedded non-removable part of the app

[VMaN]

...Well, then it's hardly a plugin anymore, is it?

Dear Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Firefox,

Please do NOT copy this feature.

Signed,
All four of us who still use Firefox.

Re:Dear Firefox

[thegarbz]

Dear 4 remaining users,

We value your feedback.
In the mean time we hope you enjoy the upcoming changes to our plugin system. We're replicating the features of a market leader with this one.

Signed,
Mozilla Dev Team

This is how it starts

[Dust038]

I get on one hand it saves some headaches to the average end user who doesn't care what plugins are installed. But on the other hand...The only reason to hide plugins is because you're doing something you don't want us to see. A plugin whose code you don't want us to delve into and figure out what it actually is doing. Specifically Sending Private Data about History and censoring. We'll see how far this gets. Thanks Google.

Re:This is how it starts

[AmiMoJo]

From what I read they are looking to do away with plug-ins entirely, which may or may not be a good thing. Well, rather than removing them, they will be for internal use only, just like any other random DLL that a developer would choose to use in their code.

On the one hand it would probably be better if browsers didn't have plug-ins because they have security issues. Flash is famous for them, as is Adobe Reader. Let everything be implemented as an extension, pure Javascript and CSS that runs inside the browser's sandboxed interpreter, and is cross compatible with other browsers. Get rid of binary interfaces, OS and architecture dependence.

On the other hand, it means you can't disable features like the Widevine DRM bullshit even if you want to. At best all you can do is use an extension to block content in that format. And worst of all, there is no UI for finding and disabling stealth plug-ins that get installed by other apps.

Re:This is how it starts

[denis-The-menace]

RE: And worst of all, there is no UI for finding and disabling stealth plug-ins that get installed by other apps.

Great!
Hidden Chrome plugins: the New Browser Helper Objects

Re:This is how it starts

[exomondo]

This makes sense for Google, but not for me. It's high time someone forked Chromium. While they're at it.... Add back in the ability to Easily see SSL certificate information!

Go ahead and do it or pay somebody to do it, that's the point of Open Source. We saw the same thing with systemd, a lot of whining but no action so these changes get "forced" through. If you're just going to whine about it and do nothing then Open Source is pointless.

You can fork and maintain (merge from the mainline and keep your plugin changes) Chromium or pay somebody to do it and then Google can just keep doing what they want to do, if enough people don't like Google's approach and use yours then so much the better, that's "voting with your wallet" so to speak. The same thing could have happened with systemd, all those people complaining could have put that time and/or money into forking and maintaining the upstream so RedHat could do what they wanted and those who didn't want systemd could have their solution and again the best solution would win out.

Yes it requires more than zero effort but that's the case with anything worth doing.

The new IE 6

[Billly Gates]

Webkit is getting too popular. Many websites are using -webkit or blink specific CSS 3 tags and ignoring HTML 5 standards. THis is not healthy.

We need another new browser and not just one on an outdated insecure version of webkit/blink, but a new rendering engine with proper plugin and multiplatform support

Re:The new IE 6

[fustakrakich]

We need another new browser

Why? The old one works just fine...

Re:The new IE 6

[exomondo]

Webkit is getting too popular. Many websites are using -webkit or blink specific CSS 3 tags and ignoring HTML 5 standards. THis is not healthy.

The glacial pace of the standards body is the problem, people want to use the new features rather than wait for a committee to standardize them and then of course they rarely go back and revisit them because the specific extensions continue to be supported.

Re:Firefox cookie management, too

[JohnFen]

Yes, that's a problem. However, there are FF add-ons that will bring that behavior back, such as Cookie Controller.

Re:so basically...

[MBGMorden]

I'm pretty sure all the ad blockers are facilitated via Extensions, not Plugins.

Can't Remove Norton Spyware

[IonOtter]

Norton Spywa...err..."anti-virus" does this. It installs itself into Chrome and Firefox, without permission, and doesn't allow you to remove it.

You can disable it, but not remove it.

Rule #1: Never get pissy with the opinion-leaders.

[Qbertino]

After Apple started with lock-in and iOS golden cages with no access to file systems, they started losing Karma with the nerd crowd. Karma they had gained so much in moving to basically a FOSS unix as their new OS of the second coming of Steve Jobs.

As Apples Karma burned, Google was the closest thing to the new darling child of the nerd/geek crew. With moves like this and them also slowly turning their phones into nothing but hardware outlets for their brave new google services they are going the way of Apple in annoying the opinion-leaders (us). This is never a good move in the long-term and usually marks a decline of some sort. You know, like planlessly releasing 2 additional messaging apps and other strange things. Chrome is an awesome browser and V8 does a lot to strengthen the web - the worlds #1 free plattform these days. But screw this up, and people will start finding ways to move away from Chrome and Google. I hope there are enough smart techies in charge at Google to backpedal on this decision.

All that aside I have a question:
Is there a Fork of Chromium in the wild that won't follow this lead? I use chromium regularly, but I've used alternatives too (Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, etc.) and wouldn't mind using a fully FOSS Chrome clone alternative for a change. Any project doing this?

Plugins are not Extensions...

[mythosaz]

Important distinction:

chrome://plugins/ is where the internal PDF viewer is enabled or disabled.
chrome://extensions/ is where you put uBlock, or your corporate overlords install WebSense.

Plugins are moving to chrome://settings/content

That's it. INTERNAL PLUGINS ARE GETTING MOVED to a new menu location.

Re:never switched to Chrome

[CrashNBrn]

Most of that functionality is available in Chrome except for Tree Style Tabs. The similar offerings on the Chrome side are fraught with gotchyas and clunky UI's to the point where you can't even use them to manage current tabs, but instead they degrade into a poor mans bookmark of recent activity.

See: Sidewise, or Tabs Outliner.