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Still, many users [http://geeksbynature.dk/2013/03/28/plugins-usage-distribution-and-future-in-firefox/ http://geeksbynature.dk/2013/03/28/plugins-usage-distrib

Still, many users [http://geeksbynature.dk/2013/03/28/plugins-usage-distribution-and-future-in-firefox/ http://geeksbynature.dk/2013/03/28/plugins-usage-distributio...] have only Flash, Java and Windows Media plugins installed, maybe also Reader and Office. With Mozilla's efforts to replace Reader with pdf.js and Flash with Shumway (or HTML5), Java is a reasonable next target.

josteink 13y ago
Except it's not getting replaced, it's getting blocked and disabled. While lots of code deployed still depends on it. I hate Java applets as much as the next guy, but lets not ignore that there's a real world out there.
- Yoric 13y ago
  The real world would be nicer if Oracle actually worked on fixing Java security issues. They have a bad history of pretending that security holes have been fixed and/or pretending that they do not exist, while exploits run rampant.
  - hrjet 13y ago
    Most of Java is open-source now. I wonder why the dependence on Oracle is so high. If Apache or a similar foundation would fork(+) and adopt it, it will benefit the Java eco-system tremendously. + Fork if legally required.
    - Sanddancer 13y ago
      Apache did try to fork it with Harmony ( http://harmony.apache.org/ http://harmony.apache.org/ ), but Sun pulled every trick in the book to keep people from contributing and/or adopting it. Then again, the code is still extant, could be time to pull it out of the attic.
      - hrjet 13y ago
        Indeed, but the situation has changed now. Sun, just before it got acquired by Oracle, had open sourced the last remaining puzzle: the Java compatibility test suite. Which allows anyone to run the test suite, claim and validate that their software is conformant with Java.
        Sanddancer 13y ago
        Not quite. You have to have your code "substantially based" upon OpenJDK, and be GPLed, in order to use their validation suite. So Harmony still would not be able to use their validation suite.
    - Tobu 13y ago
      Mozilla working on the web platform has more impact. The sites that still rely on a Java plugin were expecting binary compatibility and a big vendor's security support because that sounds cheapest long term, now that it doesn't happen, heads in the sand or a web port are a lot more likely than forking Java.
ivan_gammel 13y ago
Their PDF replacement is far from good - buggy and unusable. We have to show PDF documents to our customers directly in browser, so we need good UX, and it was disappointing to see how it works in FF compared to other browsers with Reader and how much effort do we need to fix it. I'm not surprised they screwed up with Java too.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  It's disappointing that comments like the parent are getting downvoted here. Objective, factual observations should be encouraged, not censored. The Reader "replacement" PDF viewer in Firefox is limited and buggy compared to the real thing. We also found it literally unusable for our purposes when it launched, and we routinely disable it on new installations where we still use Firefox at all (which is basically only test machines for web developers now anyway, because of exactly the recent attitude from Mozilla illustrated by this discussion).
  - lambda 13y ago
    It's an early version, and for many uses it's more stable and less intrusive than Reader. I have avoided Reader for years by using Safari, and later Chrome, which each have their own built in PDF renderers. I'm glad that Firefox has caught up, it's one of the things that has kept me from using Firefox. I read a lot of PDFs, and loading the big, slow, clunky Reader plugin, or downloading the PDF, is a non-starter.
- trycatch 13y ago
  It works great for me, better than Chrome PDF Viewer. Chrome's viewer lacks even the most basic features like table of contents, and it's integrated pretty poorly -- it doesn't show the title of pdf (so PDFs are impossible to search by title in history), and it doesn't remember last reading position.
  - ivan_gammel 13y ago
    Works-for-me approach is good if you are choosing the solution for the systems you are administrating. If you have to deal with customer setups, things usually get much worse. The fact is that we've got degraded UX for our customers with one of the FF updates, because they are not IT professionals and they have chosen FF by someone's advice, not after competent analysis of different solutions.

josteink 13y ago

Except it's not getting replaced, it's getting blocked and disabled. While lots of code deployed still depends on it. I hate Java applets as much as the next guy, but lets not ignore that there's a real world out there.

Yoric 13y ago
The real world would be nicer if Oracle actually worked on fixing Java security issues. They have a bad history of pretending that security holes have been fixed and/or pretending that they do not exist, while exploits run rampant.
- hrjet 13y ago
  Most of Java is open-source now. I wonder why the dependence on Oracle is so high. If Apache or a similar foundation would fork(+) and adopt it, it will benefit the Java eco-system tremendously. + Fork if legally required.
  - Sanddancer 13y ago
    Apache did try to fork it with Harmony ( http://harmony.apache.org/ http://harmony.apache.org/ ), but Sun pulled every trick in the book to keep people from contributing and/or adopting it. Then again, the code is still extant, could be time to pull it out of the attic.
    - hrjet 13y ago
      Indeed, but the situation has changed now. Sun, just before it got acquired by Oracle, had open sourced the last remaining puzzle: the Java compatibility test suite. Which allows anyone to run the test suite, claim and validate that their software is conformant with Java.
      - Sanddancer 13y ago
        Not quite. You have to have your code "substantially based" upon OpenJDK, and be GPLed, in order to use their validation suite. So Harmony still would not be able to use their validation suite.
  - Tobu 13y ago
    Mozilla working on the web platform has more impact. The sites that still rely on a Java plugin were expecting binary compatibility and a big vendor's security support because that sounds cheapest long term, now that it doesn't happen, heads in the sand or a web port are a lot more likely than forking Java.

ivan_gammel 13y ago

Their PDF replacement is far from good - buggy and unusable. We have to show PDF documents to our customers directly in browser, so we need good UX, and it was disappointing to see how it works in FF compared to other browsers with Reader and how much effort do we need to fix it. I'm not surprised they screwed up with Java too.

Silhouette 13y ago
It's disappointing that comments like the parent are getting downvoted here. Objective, factual observations should be encouraged, not censored. The Reader "replacement" PDF viewer in Firefox is limited and buggy compared to the real thing. We also found it literally unusable for our purposes when it launched, and we routinely disable it on new installations where we still use Firefox at all (which is basically only test machines for web developers now anyway, because of exactly the recent attitude from Mozilla illustrated by this discussion).
- lambda 13y ago
  It's an early version, and for many uses it's more stable and less intrusive than Reader. I have avoided Reader for years by using Safari, and later Chrome, which each have their own built in PDF renderers. I'm glad that Firefox has caught up, it's one of the things that has kept me from using Firefox. I read a lot of PDFs, and loading the big, slow, clunky Reader plugin, or downloading the PDF, is a non-starter.
trycatch 13y ago
It works great for me, better than Chrome PDF Viewer. Chrome's viewer lacks even the most basic features like table of contents, and it's integrated pretty poorly -- it doesn't show the title of pdf (so PDFs are impossible to search by title in history), and it doesn't remember last reading position.
- ivan_gammel 13y ago
  Works-for-me approach is good if you are choosing the solution for the systems you are administrating. If you have to deal with customer setups, things usually get much worse. The fact is that we've got degraded UX for our customers with one of the FF updates, because they are not IT professionals and they have chosen FF by someone's advice, not after competent analysis of different solutions.