24 ms·

Interesting how they are deprecating one tech (NPAPI) in the name of open web, while at the same time they are pushing NaCl.

gcp 12y ago
I was very pleasantly surprised today to read that frameworks like Unity3D have already deprecated their NaCl and Flash support.
- paulhodge 12y ago
  Yeah, that was interesting news. NaCl is officially removed in Unity 4.5 (which just came out). Flash will be removed in Unity 5 (if it's not already?). According to the Unity at least, asm.js + WebGL is the future. https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-4.5#changes https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-4.5#changes https://twitter.com/UnitZeroOne/status/471355979217793024 https://twitter.com/UnitZeroOne/status/471355979217793024
  - kristianp 12y ago
    What will that do for non-firefox users though? asm.js is Firefox only, so it's another non-open platform really.
    - skybrian 12y ago
      There's nothing Firefox-only about asm.js. It's a subset of JavaScript that runs in other browsers at reasonable speed since it's part of benchmarks that browser vendors are optimizing for. The pragma may be Firefox-only but nobody cares about that.
    - gcp 12y ago
      It won't do anything for non-Firefox users: things will just work, which is pretty much the entire point and a pretty huge difference from (P)NaCl and Flash. asm.js is nothing but a "hint" to the JS engine that some optimizations are possible. IIRC, Chrome hasn't implemented support for the pragma because they believe they can get the majority of the benefits by making V8 smarter.
FooBarWidget 12y ago
Isn't NaCl open source? What's the problem?
- gcp 12y ago
  Something being open source doesn't really have much relation to a technology being open. In this case in particular, it's replacing one open-source API that is easily re-implementable, and has been reimplemented by many parties, by another one that is realistically only available by importing the majority of Chrome into your project.
  - pekk 12y ago
    That is not different from how most of Firefox's capabilities only work as part of Firefox.
    - zanny 12y ago
      The point is that NaCL is not browser portable at all. NPAPI is. Therefor, they are depreciating a cross browser plugin architecture for one that is Chrome-only. Which basically means no more plugins at all, unless Chrome captures a ridiculous 50%+ marketshare. Which is actually likely, because Google is doing some real seedy nonsense to get Chrome on every Windows preinstall and bundled with every other freeware program in the universe.
      - justinschuh 12y ago
        It's a myth that NPAPI is browser portable (at least in the sense that portability is not a massive undertaking). NPAPI doesn't work on mobile platforms and it requires a huge effort to add or even maintain support for a multi-process browser and a modern graphics stack. Even then, the support is a hack that is a constant source of bugs, crashes, and security vulnerabilities. The only thing that's kept it working this long is constant vigilance on the part of browser makers.
    - pcwalton 12y ago
magicalist 12y ago
> Interesting how they are deprecating one tech (NPAPI) in the name of open web The only reference to the open web is > Most use cases that previously required NPAPI are now supported by JavaScript-based open web technologies while the reasoning given for deprecation is explicitly "security, speed, and stability", which is certainly true. NPAPI is bad, bad business, and wouldn't fly for a second today if it weren't grandfathered into browsers. It's a shame that there's still the NaCl fallback, but I would give good odds this will end up a positive for everyone as a forcing function, since the remaining plugins will look to JS-based solutions first since they'll continue working in all browsers. (now, unfortunately some of those will be turning to EME, but that's a different series of poor decisions)
- selectnull 12y ago
  I'm all for deprecating NPAPI. At the same time, I don't think NaCl is the answer and it's definitely not "open web" (for any reasonable definition of that term) and shouldn't be advertised as such.
  - magicalist 12y ago
    > I don't think NaCl is the answer and it's definitely not "open web" (for any reasonable definition of that term) and shouldn't be advertised as such. Agreed, but as I said above, it's definitely not being called that in the blog post.
    - selectnull 12y ago
      Maybe not. But they are advertising the use of NaCl just after they spoke about "open web". One might call it hairsplitting. But we really don't need another ActiveX in the browser. We are still recuperating from that one. And I'm not even saying NaCl is bad as ActiveX, nor am saying that ActiveX is bad from technology point of view. What I am saying is that both are/were technologies that were pushed by single browser vendor and that is bad. EDIT: fixed typo
      - 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

gcp 12y ago

I was very pleasantly surprised today to read that frameworks like Unity3D have already deprecated their NaCl and Flash support.

paulhodge 12y ago
Yeah, that was interesting news. NaCl is officially removed in Unity 4.5 (which just came out). Flash will be removed in Unity 5 (if it's not already?). According to the Unity at least, asm.js + WebGL is the future. https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-4.5#changes https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-4.5#changes https://twitter.com/UnitZeroOne/status/471355979217793024 https://twitter.com/UnitZeroOne/status/471355979217793024
- kristianp 12y ago
  What will that do for non-firefox users though? asm.js is Firefox only, so it's another non-open platform really.
  - skybrian 12y ago
    There's nothing Firefox-only about asm.js. It's a subset of JavaScript that runs in other browsers at reasonable speed since it's part of benchmarks that browser vendors are optimizing for. The pragma may be Firefox-only but nobody cares about that.
  - gcp 12y ago
    It won't do anything for non-Firefox users: things will just work, which is pretty much the entire point and a pretty huge difference from (P)NaCl and Flash. asm.js is nothing but a "hint" to the JS engine that some optimizations are possible. IIRC, Chrome hasn't implemented support for the pragma because they believe they can get the majority of the benefits by making V8 smarter.

FooBarWidget 12y ago

Isn't NaCl open source? What's the problem?

gcp 12y ago
Something being open source doesn't really have much relation to a technology being open. In this case in particular, it's replacing one open-source API that is easily re-implementable, and has been reimplemented by many parties, by another one that is realistically only available by importing the majority of Chrome into your project.
- pekk 12y ago
  That is not different from how most of Firefox's capabilities only work as part of Firefox.
  - zanny 12y ago
    The point is that NaCL is not browser portable at all. NPAPI is. Therefor, they are depreciating a cross browser plugin architecture for one that is Chrome-only. Which basically means no more plugins at all, unless Chrome captures a ridiculous 50%+ marketshare. Which is actually likely, because Google is doing some real seedy nonsense to get Chrome on every Windows preinstall and bundled with every other freeware program in the universe.
    - justinschuh 12y ago
      It's a myth that NPAPI is browser portable (at least in the sense that portability is not a massive undertaking). NPAPI doesn't work on mobile platforms and it requires a huge effort to add or even maintain support for a multi-process browser and a modern graphics stack. Even then, the support is a hack that is a constant source of bugs, crashes, and security vulnerabilities. The only thing that's kept it working this long is constant vigilance on the part of browser makers.
  - pcwalton 12y ago

magicalist 12y ago

> Interesting how they are deprecating one tech (NPAPI) in the name of open web The only reference to the open web is > Most use cases that previously required NPAPI are now supported by JavaScript-based open web technologies while the reasoning given for deprecation is explicitly "security, speed, and stability", which is certainly true. NPAPI is bad, bad business, and wouldn't fly for a second today if it weren't grandfathered into browsers. It's a shame that there's still the NaCl fallback, but I would give good odds this will end up a positive for everyone as a forcing function, since the remaining plugins will look to JS-based solutions first since they'll continue working in all browsers. (now, unfortunately some of those will be turning to EME, but that's a different series of poor decisions)

selectnull 12y ago
I'm all for deprecating NPAPI. At the same time, I don't think NaCl is the answer and it's definitely not "open web" (for any reasonable definition of that term) and shouldn't be advertised as such.
- magicalist 12y ago
  > I don't think NaCl is the answer and it's definitely not "open web" (for any reasonable definition of that term) and shouldn't be advertised as such. Agreed, but as I said above, it's definitely not being called that in the blog post.
  - selectnull 12y ago
    Maybe not. But they are advertising the use of NaCl just after they spoke about "open web". One might call it hairsplitting. But we really don't need another ActiveX in the browser. We are still recuperating from that one. And I'm not even saying NaCl is bad as ActiveX, nor am saying that ActiveX is bad from technology point of view. What I am saying is that both are/were technologies that were pushed by single browser vendor and that is bad. EDIT: fixed typo
    - 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

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