Plugins restricted to Flash *only* after 2.49

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rsx11m
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Plugins restricted to Flash *only* after 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

Heads-up for plugin-users: Note that bug 1269807 has landed on mozilla-central and will disable all plugins except for Shockwave Flash on trunk. All other plugins are ignored and remain unloaded. For Gecko 52 only, there is a hidden pref plugin.load_flash_only which isn't set and defaults to true. You'll have to create it and set to false in order to use any other plugins. This pref is supposed to go with Gecko 53 but will remain in 52 ESR for the next round of TB releases. Thus, plugin support for anything other than Flash beyond 2.49 will depend on whether or not SeaMonkey switched to an ESR-based release train like Thunderbird.
Last edited by rsx11m on October 19th, 2016, 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: adjusted title for bug 1308273 landing
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raj_bhaskar
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by raj_bhaskar »

Well that's unfortunate. We have a critical business application built on Oracle Forms that requires the Java plugin :(.
rsx11m
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

Yes, there are plenty of professional web applications which are relying on Java, so this will be a major fallout for those. Bug 1308273 will set the pref to false on trunk for the time being, thus 2.49 should still be safe, further on as long as it lasts.

Also note that Oracle apparently plans to phase out support for the Java browser plugin, thus on the long run keeping an old browser version with an old plugin around seems to be the only option unless those applications are translated to Java Web Start or an HTML5/JavaScript solution.
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by WaltS48 »

raj_bhaskar wrote:Well that's unfortunate. We have a critical business application built on Oracle Forms that requires the Java plugin :(.
It's not like this is new news.
Mozilla continues to work with the Oracle Java Platform Group to ensure a smooth transition for those web sites that use Java. More information from Oracle about Java transition plans can be found in a post from the Oracle team. Oracle recommends that sites currently using Java applets consider switching to plugin-free solutions such as Java Web Start.
REF: Oct. 8, 2015 NPAPI Plugins in Firefox | Future Releases

Has anyone started switching your critical business application?
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rsx11m
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

WaltS48 wrote:Has anyone started switching your critical business application?
Probably depends on (a) the original developer still around OR (b) the source code still being around AND someone else knows how to modify it. Many of these things are ancient and historically grown, thus used "as is" for a long time and now will break.
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-Px-
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by -Px- »

rsx11m wrote:
WaltS48 wrote:Has anyone started switching your critical business application?
Probably depends on (a) the original developer still around OR (b) the source code still being around AND someone else knows how to modify it. Many of these things are ancient and historically grown, thus used "as is" for a long time and now will break.
And the costs of migrating to new application, it will be a lot cheaper to hire just one developer who will make a custom build of FF with plugins support enabled, and roll that build over infrastructure
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by WaltS48 »

rsx11m wrote:
WaltS48 wrote:Has anyone started switching your critical business application?
Probably depends on (a) the original developer still around OR (b) the source code still being around AND someone else knows how to modify it. Many of these things are ancient and historically grown, thus used "as is" for a long time and now will break.
Sounds like SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, Firefox and all other software development. :-"
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rsx11m
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

-Px- wrote:And the costs of migrating to new application, it will be a lot cheaper to hire just one developer who will make a custom build of FF with plugins support enabled, and roll that build over infrastructure
The cheapest solution being just to keep a FF 52 ESR or SM < 2.50+ with the latest (last?) supported Java plugin around and use that for the dedicated task of accessing that specific web app. If just carrying forward the current mozilla/dom/plugins folder into future version would work, maybe for some time, but eventually that approach might break as well.
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by isaacschemm »

rsx11m wrote:
-Px- wrote:And the costs of migrating to new application, it will be a lot cheaper to hire just one developer who will make a custom build of FF with plugins support enabled, and roll that build over infrastructure
The cheapest solution being just to keep a FF 52 ESR or SM < 2.50+ with the latest (last?) supported Java plugin around and use that for the dedicated task of accessing that specific web app. If just carrying forward the current mozilla/dom/plugins folder into future version would work, maybe for some time, but eventually that approach might break as well.
If that fails, Internet Explorer will probably still support Java. I doubt Microsoft will remove any IE features, no matter how old, when the whole point of keeping IE around is to work with old software and websites.
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

libertyernie wrote:If that fails, Internet Explorer will probably still support Java. I doubt Microsoft will remove any IE features, no matter how old, when the whole point of keeping IE around is to work with old software and websites.
Isn't Internet Explorer replaced by "Edge" and thus soon obsolete anyway once Windows 10+ is the only supported OS from their side?
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by Andy Boze »

According to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Windows ... IE-support
Internet Explorer is a component of the Windows operating system and the most current version will continue to follow the specific support lifecycle policy for the operating system on which it is installed. Internet Explorer 11 will be supported for the life of Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.
That's around 2025 for Win10 extended support.

I've never used IE much, but I upgraded from Win7 to Win10 at home and have to use IE11 occasionally since Edge lacks some features. Of course, I still use SM as my primary browser, but I sometimes need to test things in other browsers.
But then again, I may be wrong.
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

Ah, ok. I myself stay a mile away from Internet Explorer, hence didn't know. 8-)
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* on 2.49

Post by LordOfTheBored »

On the other hand, IE11 is hidden in Win10, and only available as a crutch to get "legacy" applications and web pages working. MS has made it very clear that people need to stop freakin' usin' it, and likely would have deleted it outright if there weren't a ton of intraweb pages that only work in MSIE.
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* after 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

As an update, bug 1308273 landed today on trunk setting plugin.load_flash_only to false. Thus, plugins will continue to work on SeaMonkey in 2.49 and possibly beyond that as long as this pref (and the backend code) stick around.
rsx11m
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Re: Plugins restricted to Flash *only* after 2.49

Post by rsx11m »

Hmm, a bunch of bugs popped up recently for removal of specific workarounds for common plugins, with patches already. So, the point where those obsoleted plugins will no longer work may be sooner that the users of those probably hoped for...
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