Google Begins Barring Browser Plug-Ins On Chrome

Java, Silverlight and more have been given their call to pack up and move out, or at the very least change how they work with Google Chrome. From January next year Google will be banning many widely used browser plug-ins in favour of programming methods that use the standards built directly into the web.

Most Chrome plug-ins, something that shouldn’t be confused with the browsers popular add-on extensions, use a technology called NPAPI, a system that is older than the browser. Google want to change this for their PPAPI interface, the same service they used to integrate Flash Player.

“The Web has evolved. Today’s browsers are speedier, safer, and more capable than their ancestors,” said Chrome security engineer Justin Schuh. “Meanwhile, NPAPI’s ’90s-era architecture has become a leading cause of hangs, crashes, security incidents, and code complexity. Because of this, Chrome will be phasing out NPAPI support over the coming year.”

The future of browsers isn’t plug-ins, it is integration and as far as I am concerned, if it makes my browser quicker and more secure, I’m happy.

The company said it will “temporarily whitelist” these popular plug-ins on Chrome to run through NPAPI starting in January 2014:

• Silverlight (which Google said was launched by 15 percent of Chrome users in the last month, though not necessarily used by them)
• Unity (launched by 9.1 percent)
• Google Earth (9.1 percent)
• Java (8.9 percent)
• Google Talk (8.7 percent)
• Facebook Video (6.0 percent)

Thank you C-Net for providing us with this information.