Chrome removing support for NPAPI this coming year

[dsheinem]

The title of this topic is very misleading and borderline trolling.

It's a Tanooki thread: par for the course.

[marurun]

The title of this topic is very misleading and borderline trolling. They're not removing plugins, they're removing support for NPAPI. Which will cause some plugins to no longer work. That doesn't stop the developers of those plugins seeking a different implementation or using a different API. For example Netflix are moving away from requiring Silverlight altogether.

I don't know that I'd call it borderline trolling... NPAPI plugins were originally just called plugins. And these days, Firefox uses Extensions, Chrome uses Apps... Is anything that's not NPAPI called a plugin at this point? I think this is actually one of Tanooki's better threads, and it's opened up a nice discussion.

Also, I think Adblock isn't NPAPI, so it should continue to work just fine. Of course, Firefox will be slow to drop NPAPI, because Flash. Chrome has its own Flash implementation built in and IE uses a non-NPAPI implementation. That may be the direction Firefox has to go.

I do still prefer Firefox for most things. Lowest memory footprint of all the browsers, IIRC. It has some issues periodically, but overall it is my favorite.

[lisalover1]

I do still prefer Firefox for most things. Lowest memory footprint of all the browsers, IIRC. It has some issues periodically, but overall it is my favorite.

I thought Opera had the lowest memory footprint out of all the major browsers. I mean, smaller browsers like Midori probably have lower, but that's besides the point.

[marurun]

I'm not sure Opera counts as a major browser any longer. Didn't they drop their own custom rendering engine and switch to either WebKit or the Chrome WebKit fork?

[lisalover1]

I'm not sure Opera counts as a major browser any longer. Didn't they drop their own custom rendering engine and switch to either WebKit or the Chrome WebKit fork?

That sounds familiar, so they probably did. It's a shame - they used to be like, the most lightweight major browser out there.

[Niode]

I'm just a fan of full disclosure. I think to say it's dropping plugins altogether is false and leads us down a path of whether or not Google have a right to say what flies on their platform (which I have no problem with) and it leading to an inferior experience in the browser which may cause some users to jump-ship prematurely. NPAPI is insecure and slow, that's the impetus for the change and developers have had a reasonably long time to make adjustments as far as product iterations go.

I think it's a good thing that Chrome are retiring an old API in favour of a more adequately supported and secure platform for developers to release under. I'm glad that Google are in a position where they can make these important decisions and push the Web forward as a platform for content delivery.

[Tanooki]

I'm not sure Opera counts as a major browser any longer. Didn't they drop their own custom rendering engine and switch to either WebKit or the Chrome WebKit fork?

Yes they did for whatever reason. They're on a standard webkit format so they can port the browser to all the mobile devices and what not so it's unified, but in doing so nuked their special setup they once used.

And thanks, no I wasn't trolling this was a general concern as I wasn't even able to really get all the details in the digging I did as it wasn't clear. I knew NPAPI was the old style of things defacto 'plugins' so I couldn't really tell what was getting messed with or not outside of silverlight and unity which are useful to my needs along with adblock and fvd download. I'm really curious to see where things are going and I wasn't too thrilled with some of the glitching and goofy behavior chrome has been exhibiting lately for me either I'm noticing Firefox doesn't have a problem with on the same pages/sites. I couldn't care less if old format stuff is driven out but I just like to see things that are there to be continued to be supported.