Mozilla stops supporting plugins in Firefox after Flash Flash

Mozilla has announced that, with one exception, it will completely stop supporting npapi plugins in Firefox at the end of 2016. The only plugin that will remain allowed is the Flash plugin, because Flash is still is increasingly used within web pages.

Part of the plug-in strategy is to maintain a close partnership with Adobe to keep Flash running. Mozilla is also working with the developers of 3d application Unity to make the content displayed via the plug-in work directly in the browser without the need for a plug-in, Mozilla writes on its developer blog. According to Mozilla, websites that still use plug-ins such as Silverlight or Java should hurry up with adapting their technologies. If a website does need extra functionality, Mozilla recommends developing special add-ons for this. For Java there is, for example, Java Web Start as an alternative.

Browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge already no longer support legacy plugins. Chrome has removed support for the Netscape-era npapi per Chrome 45, something Google announced last September. Mozilla will therefore not build plug-in support into the 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows that is still in beta.

With the announcement of Unity and Mozilla’s partnership to streamline Unity’s plug-in phase-out, Unity is announcing the first steps in the end-of-life process surrounding the Unity Web Player phase-out. As of Unity 5.4, the Web Player becomes an unsupported product. The 5.4 version will be released in March 2016. In order to still be able to play Unity content in a browser, a webgl export of the Unity built content must be used. Webgl does support fewer options, so makers of Unity games and the like “have to be prepared for that in advance”, according to the developer.