Mozilla to Drop Support for All NPAPI Plugins in Firefox 52

Megalith

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We all knew this was coming, but NPAPI support in Firefox will officially be dropped on March 7. Since some users might confuse plug-ins with extensions, as Mozilla files both under "add-ons," I will point out the fact that this decision has no effect on the latter. What is actually being terminated is stuff like Java, Flash, and Silverlight—plugins that probably won’t be missed.

Mozilla announced initial plans to deprecate the NPAPI plugins backbone in October 2015, as most of the plugins weren't needed anymore. Its main argument was that the NPAPI codebase dragged Firefox development and that most plugins introduced unnecessary security risks. Initially, Mozilla planned to remove support for all NPAPI plugins except Flash at the end of 2016, but a second announcement made in July 2016 pushed the cutoff date to 2017, as Mozilla focused on other more important tasks, such as the launch of e10s and WebExtensions. According to Firefox software engineer Mike Kaply, the NPAPI cutoff official date is now March 7, 2017, when Mozilla will release Firefox 52.
 
Nice disaster. Most of the stuff I maintain at work are Java applets for things like digital signature crypto-cards.
Mozilla has been emptying entire mags at it's feet for years now. At this point I simply think it's purposeful and someone got paid. /tinfoilhat
 
Nice disaster. Most of the stuff I maintain at work are Java applets for things like digital signature crypto-cards.
Mozilla has been emptying entire mags at it's feet for years now. At this point I simply think it's purposeful and someone got paid. /tinfoilhat
Wtf are you smoking? Other browsers dropped support too. Go back to IE11 if you need legacy stuff. Chrome dropped support in September 2015 yes over a year ago.
 
Nice disaster. Most of the stuff I maintain at work are Java applets for things like digital signature crypto-cards.
Mozilla has been emptying entire mags at it's feet for years now. At this point I simply think it's purposeful and someone got paid. /tinfoilhat

I've gotta say, Java needs to be murdered and laid to rest, it's a security nightmare. The sad thing is, in order to continue using legacy applications that still run on Java you're going to have to run IE, which is another security nightmare....
 
we should nuke all plug ins, it's the only way to be sure. Java and flash in my browser? I think not
 
Wtf are you smoking? Other browsers dropped support too. Go back to IE11 if you need legacy stuff. Chrome dropped support in September 2015 yes over a year ago.

I liked having the option of running a crappy plugin in a relatively modern browser and not have to deal with two browsers, especially IE11.
 
no java or flash in my FF clone anyway.
the only site i use that has flash is clicker heroes. and im running that on another system on ie 11 and its the only browsering that system ever does
 
Ugh. This is going to turn into a freakin' nightmare when I get customers calling me ramming it down my throat that their Java/Flash stops working in FF. Time to make up a canned response cue card! :whistle:
 
Guess I'll be using Firefox ESR 45.x.x for years to come then, oh well.
 
Ugh. This is going to turn into a freakin' nightmare when I get customers calling me ramming it down my throat that their Java/Flash stops working in FF. Time to make up a canned response cue card! :whistle:

If you come up with a good one, pass it on to me. ;) Your message just made me realize that I'm going to be dealing with the same exact thing...
 
Well, this is going to wreak havoc on some of my clients. Specifically, those that require Silverlight plugins for their EMR (Valant).
On the PC, this probably means they may have to start using IE11 again (which is a security nightmare in and of itself).
On the Mac's, it basically leaves us up s**t creek without a paddle, as the EMR won't support Safari.

I guess for the moment we will just be sticking with the Firefox ESR builds, but they tend to start getting flagged by the Gmail client as "outdated browser detected" ridiculously quickly.
 
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The original announcement was on October, 2015. That is a year warning to make the necessary modifications.

Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy
 
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The original announcement was on October, 2015. That is a year warning to make the necessary modifications.

Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy

In my case, one of the necessary modifications is replacing Linux installs with Windows to support the software we have to work on. (provided by the departments we work for).
That's the part I don't like.
 
In my case, one of the necessary modifications is replacing Linux installs with Windows to support the software we have to work on. (provided by the departments we work for).
That's the part I don't like.

The persistence of corporations continuing to use Java is quite simply so annoying! It's a security nightmare made worse by installing Windows so users can run a now unsupported web browser in order to continue working effectively.
 
The persistence of corporations continuing to use Java is quite simply so annoying! It's a security nightmare made worse by installing Windows so users can run a now unsupported web browser in order to continue working effectively.

Yes, I would not consider such a hybrid of HTML5 features and Java addons pretty by any means.
However the plugin has always been optional. I don't know how much legacy baggage would have to be carried over in order to facilitate the ability to optionally install Java. Maybe it's too much baggage.

It's like IE6 intranet software all over again.
In my case, the main cause for using Java are digital signatures. We're required by law to place timestamped signatures via a cardreader on documents we send and produce.

Those applets come in two forms. A small Java button with some dialog windows for typing in the PIN number to the cert, and a larger stand alone thin client.

The former will not work, the latter thankfully will.
 
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