Mozilla to pull the plug on Firefox plugins by end of 2016

9, Mozilla confirmed that by the end of 2016 the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) will no longer feature plugin support in its browser.

As HTML5, CSS3, and various of the W3C-developed Web APIs have matured, the NPAPI had slowly become useless, along with being a security risk and a source of many crashes.

It’s contrary to what Adobe as it is poised to obliterate Flash and its assortment of titles, and decently, Unity should be applauded for its gallant effort.

Mozilla has announced that it is going to remove support for the majority of plugins on the Firefox browser. And so, when Firefox drops support, there will be no current, mainstream, and actively maintained browser that will able to handle these plugins.

One major exception, said Smedberg, will be Adobe Flash, which will continue to be supported by Firefox. Nearly all the old extensions that offer extended multimedia features will be disabled on the browser, with Adobe Flash being the only exception. A few variants of the browser, such as 64-bit Firefox for Windows, already lack this plugin support.

As Java is among the widely-used web sources for many webmasters, Mozilla is closely working with the Oracle Java Platform Group to provide a “smooth transition” for sites that use Java.

As part of our plugin strategy, Mozilla and Unity are proud to jointly announce a close collaboration and an aligned roadmap that will enable Unity-based content to be experienced directly in the browser without plugins.

The Mozilla team stated they wish to work closely with affected publishers to make a painless transition to web technologies which are a powerful platform and can usually do everything that a plugin can’t do. “The Web provides an increasingly rich environment which should eliminate the need for plugins, and we are eager to continue improving the Web platform for any use cases where plugins may still be required”.

Site owners and developers still relying on the likes of Java and Silverlight are being encouraged to investigate alternative technologies that can achieve the same things. And thus the company warns site managers that while the plugin shutdown has already begun, they should begin preparations for the plugins to stop working on all versions of Firefox by the end of next year.