9 ms·

The Final Countdown for NPAPI

90 points by cleverjake 12y ago

drawkbox 12y ago
So they are indeed going through with it. I thought they would push back a bit since Unity isn't ready on WebGL and Silverlight is still used on Netflix. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Hopefully Unity can get Unity 5 live and WebGL solid by April 15 latest.
- bhouston 12y ago
  The Unity 5 WebGL programs are beasts to download. It is too bad there isn't more ThreeJS-based development: http://threejs.org http://threejs.org
  - benologist 12y ago
    The size is pretty much fixed regardless since it's usually game assets and audio/video that blow the sizes up, especially retina stuff. There's always flash and javascript games if you're looking for games that are optimized for file size.
  - drawkbox 12y ago
    Indeed three.js is more like the future but until the webviews in all mobile devices run WebGL fast enough, Unity helps most on the mobile side and one build so it is used. When WebGL runs fast across the board, many games can just use that for all platforms. I personally love three.js but use Unity, Lime/Haxe/OpenFL and Cocos because of mobile first.
- ianlevesque 12y ago
  Netflix no longer requires Silverlight in Chrome.
  - drawkbox 12y ago
    True, still a ton of cleanup, old silverlight video/content/systems to clean up. I bet content costs are a little higher as well with many formats having to be pushed to the edges rather than one VC-1 format. I wonder why haven't they moved all systems/browsers to it if their html5 player side and content is up to speed? I usually watch in Safari because I work in Chrome/Firefox for dev typically.
    - gurupanguji 12y ago
      IIRC, Netflix uses a no plugin mode in Safari on Yosemite.
    - trunnell 12y ago
      Hi, I work at Netflix. We switched from VC-1 to H.264 a few years ago, so the encodes don't change with the switch from Silverlight to HTML5 video. Currently just IE 11, Chrome, and Safari 8 in Yosemite support our HTML5 player. It depends on three new APIs in HTML5: MSE, EME, WebCrypto. Shameless plug: I'm currently hiring for the engineering manager of the team that builds our HTML5 streaming video player. http://jobs.netflix.com/jobs.php?id=NFX01593 http://jobs.netflix.com/jobs.php?id=NFX01593
- aidenn0 12y ago
  I find webgl to be completely unusable on linux; I have one box with a radeon and another with an nvidia. The nvidia one kind-of-sort-of works. I had to completely turn off accelerated rendering in chromium on the radeon box, or I would get extreme display corruption on even on non webgl pages.
  - thristian 12y ago
    I have a box with Intel HD 4000 graphics (Ivy Bridge, when Intel graphics started being half-decent) and WebGL is great on Linux.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    Are you sure this isn't a subset of the problem of "3D graphics on Linux?" I assume you've verified against other 3D apps on those machines that the graphics stack itself is standards-compliant.
    - aidenn0 12y ago
      the nvidia box is definitely more solid than the radeon; the nvidia one does every 3d game I've thrown at it with no noticable issues. However, it's blacklisted by chrome for webgl, and when I tried forcing it, there were definite stability issues. The radeon box, however, has noticable z-ordering artifacts and some minor flickering on games. Chrome is by far the worst application for it though, web gl or no web gl.
adamrmcd 12y ago
I understand the reasoning behind this, but this is super annoying, since: 1. I am required to use GWT 2.5.1 for our java webapp 2. I choose to use Chrome on Mac OS X 3. Chrome 39 just auto-updated to support 64-bit on OS X 4. Chrome 39 stopped supporting NPAPI 5. GWT-2.5.1 and the GWT Chrome extension are not 64-bit compatible, and require NPAPI. 6. I have a major deadline this week finish styling our webapp I've heard that enabling SuperDevMode can workaround all these problems, however I'm just an HTML5/CSS3/GWT-UI-Binder developer, not a Java/Eclipse/GWT expert. PITA. (Perhaps I should enhance my calm and work on some LaTeX or Python)
- cleverjake 12y ago
  Download an older version of chrome, and turn off auto updates.
  - adamrmcd 12y ago
    I had to resort to Firefox 24 on OS X, however I found a Chromium 38 build. Guess that'll do for now. http://www.freesmug.org/chromium http://www.freesmug.org/chromium Could not find any older builds of Chrome for OS X (updated to say I'm on OS X)
    - cleverjake 12y ago
      www.oldversion.com/windows/google-chrome/
    - AlexeyBrin 12y ago
      Maybe this will help http://google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/mac/old http://google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/mac/old (fair warning, I didn't actually tried to download/use any of these).
      - adamrmcd 12y ago
        That's perfect! .. Insta-bookmark! Although I did find Chromium 38 did work to get me back online, this uptodown site will prove useful for other tests requiring full Chrome. Thanks!
shmerl 12y ago
I wonder what will happen with Java applets once Firefox will try to switch to Wayland. Flash is going to be replaced with Shumway, but Java will be left behind. There is one case where I still use it (rather dumb Cisco Web VPN).
- ianlevesque 12y ago
  Cisco has many other VPN alternatives.
  - shmerl 12y ago
    Yeah, that's not the question of alternatives. It's the question of what one has to use with some stuff where requirements come from elsewhere.
    - fixermark 12y ago
      I would assume it will go the way of other situations I've seen where embedded software depends on a specific version of a browser: the enterprise in question will lock the acceptable in-house browser version until such time as risk / cost of lack of security support outweighs risk / cost of changing their add-on solution.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- anon4 12y ago
  Separate firefox in a X server. A lighter version of what some of us need to do online banking - IE6 in a WindowsXP VM.
- geofft 12y ago
  Have you seen if OpenConnect is capable of connecting to your VPN? http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/ http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/
  - 12y ago
McGlockenshire 12y ago
Did they finally update the video chat parts of Talk / Hangouts to not need a NPAPI-only plugin? It was absolutely absurd of them to kill NPAPI in Chrome and not update Talk / Hangouts accordingly. I ended up switching back to Firefox at work just so I could use Hangout video chats again.
- cleverjake 12y ago
  back in june - http://www.cnet.com/news/in-chrome-googles-hangouts-plugin-goes-extinct/ http://www.cnet.com/news/in-chrome-googles-hangouts-plugin-g... I use video chats every day (on chrome canary os x) and never had an issue
  - McGlockenshire 12y ago
    Odd, it seems like I just checked the other week, but it has been a while. It's also quite possible that the way they segment their product rollouts between public and Google Apps for Business accounts might have meant that we didn't get the update when I last checked it. Using Chrome on Linux also might have something to do with it...
    - kentonv 12y ago
      > Using Chrome on Linux also might have something to do with it... The switch to NaCl/WebRTC instead of the NPAPI plugin is what made Hangouts on Linux actually starting working for me.
      - scrollaway 12y ago
        It also broke screenshare on Linux :(
dtf 12y ago
I'm a bit sad that first Pointer Events which had support for pressure/tilt from pen input got killed, and now NPAPI which drove the Wacom Plugin is also dead. Seems there's no future route now to get pen input (eg Wacom, Samsung S-Pen) into Chrome apps.
- soult 12y ago
  I don't know what exactly you want to do with the pen input, but you could use native messaging[0] to get the data into chrome. Basically a small, native program that (bidirectionally) communicates with a Chrome extension via JSON. I used the same approach to get customer signatures from a Wacom signature tablet into a web app. 0: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/messaging#native-messaging https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/messaging#native-mes...
  - dtf 12y ago
    Thanks! I'll look into that. Currently I'm piping evdev (ie /dev/input/event*) events through a WebSocket for use in my own personal apps/experiments on Linux. I'd love to see browser pen support though... maybe something could be added to Touch Events? It's just such a nice, precise form of input.
    - kuschku 12y ago
      Actually, there is an implementation of Touch Events (the Microsoft one) that already supports all this...
      - wlesieutre 12y ago
        Is that Microsoft's "Pointer Events" that Google has decided not to support? http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/google-to-drop-microsoft-designed-touch-web-spec-stick-with-apple-tech/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/google...
  - ygra 12y ago
    But that's just a Chrome-only solution again, requiring you to use a different method for each browser. A plugin at least gives you a few ones in one solution.
bratsche 12y ago
Now I've got that "Final Countdown" song stuck in my head. :(
cpeterso 12y ago
Can Chromium use Chrome's Flash PPAPI plugin? Or will Chromium users, without access to Flash PPAPI or NPAPI, have no Flash ?
- geofft 12y ago
  On Debian and Ubuntu, you can install the "pepperflashplugin-nonfree" package to download a copy of Chrome and extract the PPAPI Flash plugin therein and install it. http://packages.ubuntu.com/pepperflashplugin-nonfree http://packages.ubuntu.com/pepperflashplugin-nonfree https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pepperflashplugin-nonfree https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pepperflashplugin-nonfree
- xiaomai 12y ago
  Chromium can use Chrome's flash. Unfortunately, it's not distributed separately from Chrome. This is how Arch LInux pulls it out: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ch/chromium-pepper-flash/PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ch/chromium-pepper-flash/...
- aidenn0 12y ago
  Yes you can, I do it on gentoo.
- keeperofdakeys 12y ago
  Since Chrome is just a repackaged Chromium, you can copy all the libraries from the Chrome download. Including both flash and libpdf.
drvortex 12y ago
What sort of moronic thinking leads developers to 'remove the override' for advanced users?
- ygra 12y ago
  So they can retire a complete feature, reducing complexity.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    Exactly. The ideal future isn't one where only advanced users have access to NPAPI; it's one where the browser doesn't support NPAPI at all, and (among other things) Chrome no longer has to have a big pile of special support to launch NPAPIs in their own separate process and transparently pipe all the important bits to and from the browser's process.
  - drvortex 12y ago
    It's exactly that kind of thinking that worked so brilliantly for Firefox, isn't it?
_random_ 12y ago
So transpilation to legacy languages is now the only option?
jimmaswell 12y ago
It's really too bad that compatibility isn't cool anymore.
userbinator 12y ago
With Google, it's always about "security". Not security as in "you can control what your software does", but as in "we'll do what we want to control you and you will like it." The security issues were real, but I don't think trying to turn the browser into one monolithic thing with everything bundled in it is the right way to go. Unwanted plugins were extremely easy to block (no Flash -> no more distracting ads) and allow for the sites you trusted, not so easy now with everything integrated (and the way they're "simplifying" the settings and hiding them just makes things worse.)

90 points by cleverjake 12y ago

So they are indeed going through with it. I thought they would push back a bit since Unity isn't ready on WebGL and Silverlight is still used on Netflix. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Hopefully Unity can get Unity 5 live and WebGL solid by April 15 latest.

bhouston 12y ago
The Unity 5 WebGL programs are beasts to download. It is too bad there isn't more ThreeJS-based development: http://threejs.org http://threejs.org
- benologist 12y ago
  The size is pretty much fixed regardless since it's usually game assets and audio/video that blow the sizes up, especially retina stuff. There's always flash and javascript games if you're looking for games that are optimized for file size.
- drawkbox 12y ago
  Indeed three.js is more like the future but until the webviews in all mobile devices run WebGL fast enough, Unity helps most on the mobile side and one build so it is used. When WebGL runs fast across the board, many games can just use that for all platforms. I personally love three.js but use Unity, Lime/Haxe/OpenFL and Cocos because of mobile first.
ianlevesque 12y ago
Netflix no longer requires Silverlight in Chrome.
- drawkbox 12y ago
  True, still a ton of cleanup, old silverlight video/content/systems to clean up. I bet content costs are a little higher as well with many formats having to be pushed to the edges rather than one VC-1 format. I wonder why haven't they moved all systems/browsers to it if their html5 player side and content is up to speed? I usually watch in Safari because I work in Chrome/Firefox for dev typically.
  - gurupanguji 12y ago
    IIRC, Netflix uses a no plugin mode in Safari on Yosemite.
  - trunnell 12y ago
    Hi, I work at Netflix. We switched from VC-1 to H.264 a few years ago, so the encodes don't change with the switch from Silverlight to HTML5 video. Currently just IE 11, Chrome, and Safari 8 in Yosemite support our HTML5 player. It depends on three new APIs in HTML5: MSE, EME, WebCrypto. Shameless plug: I'm currently hiring for the engineering manager of the team that builds our HTML5 streaming video player. http://jobs.netflix.com/jobs.php?id=NFX01593 http://jobs.netflix.com/jobs.php?id=NFX01593
aidenn0 12y ago
I find webgl to be completely unusable on linux; I have one box with a radeon and another with an nvidia. The nvidia one kind-of-sort-of works. I had to completely turn off accelerated rendering in chromium on the radeon box, or I would get extreme display corruption on even on non webgl pages.
- thristian 12y ago
  I have a box with Intel HD 4000 graphics (Ivy Bridge, when Intel graphics started being half-decent) and WebGL is great on Linux.
- fixermark 12y ago
  Are you sure this isn't a subset of the problem of "3D graphics on Linux?" I assume you've verified against other 3D apps on those machines that the graphics stack itself is standards-compliant.
  - aidenn0 12y ago
    the nvidia box is definitely more solid than the radeon; the nvidia one does every 3d game I've thrown at it with no noticable issues. However, it's blacklisted by chrome for webgl, and when I tried forcing it, there were definite stability issues. The radeon box, however, has noticable z-ordering artifacts and some minor flickering on games. Chrome is by far the worst application for it though, web gl or no web gl.

adamrmcd 12y ago

I understand the reasoning behind this, but this is super annoying, since: 1. I am required to use GWT 2.5.1 for our java webapp 2. I choose to use Chrome on Mac OS X 3. Chrome 39 just auto-updated to support 64-bit on OS X 4. Chrome 39 stopped supporting NPAPI 5. GWT-2.5.1 and the GWT Chrome extension are not 64-bit compatible, and require NPAPI. 6. I have a major deadline this week finish styling our webapp I've heard that enabling SuperDevMode can workaround all these problems, however I'm just an HTML5/CSS3/GWT-UI-Binder developer, not a Java/Eclipse/GWT expert. PITA. (Perhaps I should enhance my calm and work on some LaTeX or Python)

cleverjake 12y ago
Download an older version of chrome, and turn off auto updates.
- adamrmcd 12y ago
  I had to resort to Firefox 24 on OS X, however I found a Chromium 38 build. Guess that'll do for now. http://www.freesmug.org/chromium http://www.freesmug.org/chromium Could not find any older builds of Chrome for OS X (updated to say I'm on OS X)
  - cleverjake 12y ago
    www.oldversion.com/windows/google-chrome/
  - AlexeyBrin 12y ago
    Maybe this will help http://google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/mac/old http://google-chrome.en.uptodown.com/mac/old (fair warning, I didn't actually tried to download/use any of these).
    - adamrmcd 12y ago
      That's perfect! .. Insta-bookmark! Although I did find Chromium 38 did work to get me back online, this uptodown site will prove useful for other tests requiring full Chrome. Thanks!

shmerl 12y ago

I wonder what will happen with Java applets once Firefox will try to switch to Wayland. Flash is going to be replaced with Shumway, but Java will be left behind. There is one case where I still use it (rather dumb Cisco Web VPN).

ianlevesque 12y ago
Cisco has many other VPN alternatives.
- shmerl 12y ago
  Yeah, that's not the question of alternatives. It's the question of what one has to use with some stuff where requirements come from elsewhere.
  - fixermark 12y ago
    I would assume it will go the way of other situations I've seen where embedded software depends on a specific version of a browser: the enterprise in question will lock the acceptable in-house browser version until such time as risk / cost of lack of security support outweighs risk / cost of changing their add-on solution.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
anon4 12y ago
Separate firefox in a X server. A lighter version of what some of us need to do online banking - IE6 in a WindowsXP VM.
geofft 12y ago
Have you seen if OpenConnect is capable of connecting to your VPN? http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/ http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/
- 12y ago

McGlockenshire 12y ago

Did they finally update the video chat parts of Talk / Hangouts to not need a NPAPI-only plugin? It was absolutely absurd of them to kill NPAPI in Chrome and not update Talk / Hangouts accordingly. I ended up switching back to Firefox at work just so I could use Hangout video chats again.

cleverjake 12y ago
back in june - http://www.cnet.com/news/in-chrome-googles-hangouts-plugin-goes-extinct/ http://www.cnet.com/news/in-chrome-googles-hangouts-plugin-g... I use video chats every day (on chrome canary os x) and never had an issue
- McGlockenshire 12y ago
  Odd, it seems like I just checked the other week, but it has been a while. It's also quite possible that the way they segment their product rollouts between public and Google Apps for Business accounts might have meant that we didn't get the update when I last checked it. Using Chrome on Linux also might have something to do with it...
  - kentonv 12y ago
    > Using Chrome on Linux also might have something to do with it... The switch to NaCl/WebRTC instead of the NPAPI plugin is what made Hangouts on Linux actually starting working for me.
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      It also broke screenshare on Linux :(

dtf 12y ago

I'm a bit sad that first Pointer Events which had support for pressure/tilt from pen input got killed, and now NPAPI which drove the Wacom Plugin is also dead. Seems there's no future route now to get pen input (eg Wacom, Samsung S-Pen) into Chrome apps.

soult 12y ago
I don't know what exactly you want to do with the pen input, but you could use native messaging[0] to get the data into chrome. Basically a small, native program that (bidirectionally) communicates with a Chrome extension via JSON. I used the same approach to get customer signatures from a Wacom signature tablet into a web app. 0: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/messaging#native-messaging https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/messaging#native-mes...
- dtf 12y ago
  Thanks! I'll look into that. Currently I'm piping evdev (ie /dev/input/event*) events through a WebSocket for use in my own personal apps/experiments on Linux. I'd love to see browser pen support though... maybe something could be added to Touch Events? It's just such a nice, precise form of input.
  - kuschku 12y ago
    Actually, there is an implementation of Touch Events (the Microsoft one) that already supports all this...
    - wlesieutre 12y ago
      Is that Microsoft's "Pointer Events" that Google has decided not to support? http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/google-to-drop-microsoft-designed-touch-web-spec-stick-with-apple-tech/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/google...
- ygra 12y ago
  But that's just a Chrome-only solution again, requiring you to use a different method for each browser. A plugin at least gives you a few ones in one solution.

bratsche 12y ago

Now I've got that "Final Countdown" song stuck in my head. :(

cpeterso 12y ago

Can Chromium use Chrome's Flash PPAPI plugin? Or will Chromium users, without access to Flash PPAPI or NPAPI, have no Flash ?

geofft 12y ago
On Debian and Ubuntu, you can install the "pepperflashplugin-nonfree" package to download a copy of Chrome and extract the PPAPI Flash plugin therein and install it. http://packages.ubuntu.com/pepperflashplugin-nonfree http://packages.ubuntu.com/pepperflashplugin-nonfree https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pepperflashplugin-nonfree https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pepperflashplugin-nonfree
xiaomai 12y ago
Chromium can use Chrome's flash. Unfortunately, it's not distributed separately from Chrome. This is how Arch LInux pulls it out: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ch/chromium-pepper-flash/PKGBUILD https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ch/chromium-pepper-flash/...
aidenn0 12y ago
Yes you can, I do it on gentoo.
keeperofdakeys 12y ago
Since Chrome is just a repackaged Chromium, you can copy all the libraries from the Chrome download. Including both flash and libpdf.

drvortex 12y ago

What sort of moronic thinking leads developers to 'remove the override' for advanced users?

ygra 12y ago
So they can retire a complete feature, reducing complexity.
- fixermark 12y ago
  Exactly. The ideal future isn't one where only advanced users have access to NPAPI; it's one where the browser doesn't support NPAPI at all, and (among other things) Chrome no longer has to have a big pile of special support to launch NPAPIs in their own separate process and transparently pipe all the important bits to and from the browser's process.
- drvortex 12y ago
  It's exactly that kind of thinking that worked so brilliantly for Firefox, isn't it?

_random_ 12y ago

So transpilation to legacy languages is now the only option?

jimmaswell 12y ago

It's really too bad that compatibility isn't cool anymore.

userbinator 12y ago

With Google, it's always about "security". Not security as in "you can control what your software does", but as in "we'll do what we want to control you and you will like it." The security issues were real, but I don't think trying to turn the browser into one monolithic thing with everything bundled in it is the right way to go. Unwanted plugins were extremely easy to block (no Flash -> no more distracting ads) and allow for the sites you trusted, not so easy now with everything integrated (and the way they're "simplifying" the settings and hiding them just makes things worse.)