Mozilla said it would will cut off support for Netscape Plug-in Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) plug-ins, but only by the end of 2016.
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As HTML5, CSS3, and various of the W3C-developed Web APIs have matured, the NPAPI had slowly become useless, along with being a security risk and a source of many crashes. The company has been working, along with other web proponents, to implement functionality like streaming video, advanced graphics, and gaming features that used to be available only via NPAPI plugins. Google renounced support for NPAPI when it launched Chrome 42 in April, and Microsoft did the same in July, at the release of its proprietary browser, Edge.
On its path of providing a plugin free web browser, Mozilla has announced a close collaboration and an aligned roadmap so as to bring Unity-based content to be experienced directly in the browser without plugins. Back in September 2014, Google announced that NPAPI support would be removed starting in January 2015.
“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 public policy”, says Benjamin Smedberg, Mozilla’s manager of Firefox quality engineering. The only exception will be Adobe Flash, though Mozilla will specifically work with Adobe to help ensure that the Flash experience is one that is stable and secure.
Similar technologies like Java and Silverlight will not benefit from a similar waiver, and Mozilla has pledged support for plugin developers and website publishers utilizing them.
“The Web provides an increasingly rich environment which should eliminate the need for plugins, and we are eager to continue improving the Web platform for any use cases where plugins may still be required”, Mozilla notes. As new Firefox versions will leave behind existing ecosystems of plugins and users, the 64-big Firefox for Windows has no reason to offer further plugin support. With Firefox dropping support, too, there won’t be any mainstream, current, actively maintained browser that can handle these plugins.
Mozilla is also working with Unity to enable Unity-based content directly in the browser without plugins.
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Web technologies seem to play a huge part in the future of Mozilla Firefox, and significant shifts to the add-on development have already been promised.
