Support of NPAPI plugin

Known issues, outstanding bugs and available workarounds
flashpeak
Site Admin
Posts: 369
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 3:57 pm

Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by flashpeak »

In Slimjet 4.0, all the NPAPI plugins (including Java, Silverlight) are disabled by default. If you are still relying on NPAPI plugins, type slimjet://flags/ and change the option "Enable NPAPI Mac, Windows" to enabled state. After that, you need restart Slimjet for the option to take effect.

Google's chrome team intends to remove NPAPI support completely later this year. We will keep the option available instead if they don't remove all the supporting source code from the code base. There are still a lot of people who need Java and Silverlight.

UPDATE:

We have changed the default value of this option to be ON in 4.0.4 to minimize disturbance to our users. We believe the world is not ready to live without NPAPI at this time. If you updated to earlier builds of V4 first, you still need to manually turn it on based on the instructions above. If you update from V3 or earlier directly, the NPAPI option should stay on by default.

UPDATE:
flashpeak wrote:We have started working on migrating Slimjet to Chromium 46. But we are running into some difficulty with the support of Java. We found a way to re-enable the support of NPAPI and silverlight works just fine. However, Java simply refuses to work properly so far. It looks like Google's chrome team has removed or changed a lot of the supporting code for NPAPI. We will give a few more day's work to investigate the possibility. But from what we are looking at now, we might have to live without Java in Slimjet 6 built on top of Chromium 46.

We will make Slimjet 5 available for users who have to have Java support in any case.
Stephen Cheng
FlashPeak Inc.

Net4Free
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2014 2:57 am

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by Net4Free »

Hallo SJ-Team,

many thx for activating this option. This was really painful without. Keep up the good work! :D

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rseilersj
Posts: 60
Joined: Sat May 09, 2015 1:54 pm

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by rseilersj »

Now enabled by default in 4.0.4.0, though I take it that on the flags page it's meant to still look like it's off, right?

flashpeak
Site Admin
Posts: 369
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 3:57 pm

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by flashpeak »

If you updated it to early builds of V4 first, the option will retain the off state. You will need to turn it on manually in this case.

When it is on, you should see a "Disable" link below the option.

I believe the world is not yet fully ready to live completely without npapi plugins. Java, silverlight is all over the places. And a lot of the banking sites and e-commerce sites in China use Activex controls which rely on NPAPI. Seriously, 99% of the users wouldn't know where to turn on such a flag if it is set to default off. They will simply dump the browser and use firefox/IE instead. Google's chrome team is sometimes too aggressive when pushing users into the future.
rseilersj wrote:Now enabled by default in 4.0.4.0, though I take it that on the flags page it's meant to still look like it's off, right?
Stephen Cheng
FlashPeak Inc.

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rseilersj
Posts: 60
Joined: Sat May 09, 2015 1:54 pm

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by rseilersj »

OK, thanks.

Yes, I've already heard from a few people wondering why a particular Silverlight site they use no longer works. When they find in September (as of Chrome v45) that even the workaround doesn't work, I wonder what they'll do. It's hard to believe that at least Silverlight but especially Java won't get PPAPI plugins, though.

dev
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 10:30 pm

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by dev »

Thanks for the index release/archive flashpeak I think a few users may be needing it after chrome 45 :lol:

I think the move away from npapi is a good thing, its got to be at least a 20 year old technology but for google to remove it completely will not go down easy for many users. I cannot see Microsoft updating silverlight in any great hurry so its usable in a rival product and java well it is a bane most of the time even most tech sites tell users to disable it hell even minecraft doesn't need it to run now so i'm not fussed either way what happens with java.

I've read a lot of users are going to swap back to firefox when the change comes but mozilla are going down the same route with npapi and their plugins so maybe the new king of browsers will be Microsoft's Edge now that would be a turn up for the books.

Here's hoping that slimjet can keep npapi for a while longer than chrome 45 release, it will give us time to judge how the landscape of those so handy plugins has changed, i think the main problem will be everybody else trying to catch up so their websites/plugins work in chrome so its going to be a interesting time ahead for all internet users.

Net4Free
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2014 2:57 am

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by Net4Free »

Halo Support Team,

what about linux? There is the NPAPI plugin still not implemented! Firefox no problem.

LimboSlam
Posts: 129
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2014 3:02 am

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by LimboSlam »

Awesome! Thanks flashpeak!! :D

Yeah I really need this to stay enable because most of my projects/schoolwork call for NPAPI Plugins, like QuickTime, Java and of course Flash. Not only that but I like to game (I'm a gamer), two of them I use are Unity Web Player and Shockwave Player. Umm, some other as well.

So very mush thanks!!

spotify95
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Sep 02, 2015 11:43 am

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by spotify95 »

Just posting to say that Chrome 45 has now been released onto the stable channel, and as a result I have now downloaded your Slimjet browser to keep compatibility with my Chrome extensions/apps/passwords etc as well as keeping NPAPI support. Lets hope that Chromium haven't deleted the NPAPI code.

BillLite
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 1:07 pm

Re: Support of NPAPI plugin

Post by BillLite »

spotify95 wrote:Just posting to say that Chrome 45 has now been released onto the stable channel, and as a result I have now downloaded your Slimjet browser to keep compatibility with my Chrome extensions/apps/passwords etc as well as keeping NPAPI support. Lets hope that Chromium haven't deleted the NPAPI code.
We may be too late for that! If Slimjet is built on future chromium code, I fear it has already 'defecated' any reference to disabling PPAPI and Enabling NPAPI.

The most recent build of chromium I tried(last week) was FUBAR'd regarding any usage of NPAPI.
And of course PPAPI just doesn't do the job for most sites that require a GOOD working flash. THANKS GOOGLE FOR SCREWING UP OUR WEB EXPERIENCE!

Slimjet read my chromium profiles very well! All i had to do was rearrange the toolbar(s) and disable the Slimjet 'ask for password' thing and my passwords for chromium were all there.

IF I HAVE TO I WILL KEEP the 4.0.15.0 download and it's portable version on my machine in case Slimjet all of a sudden picks up chromium code that gets rid of NPAPI plugin support.

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