Currently Chrome supports NPAPI plugins, but they are blocked by default unless the user chooses to allow them for specific sites (via the page action UI). A small number of the most popular plugins are whitelisted and allowed by default. In January 2015 we will remove the whitelist, meaning all plugins will be blocked by default.
In April 2015 NPAPI support will be disabled by default in Chrome and we will unpublish extensions requiring NPAPI plugins from the Chrome Web Store. Although plugin vendors are working hard to move to alternate technologies, a small number of users still rely on plugins that haven’t completed the transition yet. We will provide an override for advanced users (via chrome://flags/#enable-npapi) and enterprises (via Enterprise Policy) to temporarily re-enable NPAPI while they wait for mission-critical plugins to make the transition.
Definitely a big chance some Chrome users will have to account for.
Meanwhile, Linux users still cannot use Chrome on pages that utilize the Java plugin, as it is still using NPAPI, and (as far as I know) any of the “override” flags that allow you to re-enable NPAPI don’t work on Linux.
Thanks Google.
Right. I concur. You’d think that Google would make Chrome funtion better for Linux users, since Chrome OS is Linux-based.
Definately a big “thanks” to Google…
but bad.
As FF folks say Google equivalent isn’t equivalent at all, and some mandatory parts of API are hidden…
So no non-NPAPI flash in Firefox.
(Unless Google or Adobe step up and release full API docs!)
Actually, someone has written a wrapper for the PPAPI flash plugin to be used in Mozilla browsers:
https://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin
Good. Flash dying would be a huge improvement for everyone.
It’s great to know that Java, Flash, Etc. will soon disappear .
My only regret is that asm.js is still not widely well supported. Chrome finally gave up to pressure and their now JS engine, TurboFan will support AOT compilation for asm.js.
The remaining problem is Internet Explorer which, at this point, will not support asm.js+webgl properly and will not get rid of ActiveX plugins.
The only problem are in fact the ActiveX plugins. Since asm.js is backwards compatible with JavaScript, I think IE will suffer on poor performance on asm.js apps and maybe that will force them to implement it.
What will happen to Google’s own Hangouts/Talk plugin for Gmail?
https://www.google.com/tools/dlpage/hangoutplugin
Is this also NPAPI or is it something else?
It’ll be using webrtc, no plugins needed.
My guess would be a WebRTC based implementation.