Javapocalypse soon! Oracle warns devs to bin plugins, fast

Oracle's warned developers who still expect browsers to run code developed for Java plugins to get busy finding an alternative.

The developers behind all major browsers have decided the NPAPI framework invented last millennium by Netscape has had its day, because there are now better ways to do multimedia and other fun stuff inside a browser. Chrome therefore binned plugins in 2015, IE gave up ages ago, the fat lady sang at Opera during 2016 and Safari has stopped bothering too.

Firefox is hanging on, just. As Reg readers doubtless recall, Firefox gets a new release every six weeks or so. Some of those releases are also given the status of “Extended Support Release” (ESR) and supported for approximately one year.

Firefox 52, due in March, will be an ESR release and will include NPAPI plugin support, so will run Java plugins. But once support for that browser expires in early 2018, it'll be game over for applets.

JDK 9 is due in the middle of 2017 and will deprecate plugins. So Java developers really have no excuse to find alternative arrangements ASAP. Or as Oracle puts it: “Developers and users still relying on the Java plugin technology in the 32-bit Mozilla Firefox web browser should consider migrating to a different solution.”

There's one exception to Firefox's plans: Adobe's colander-coded Flash, which Mozilla will support out of the belief the web won't be as much fun without it. ®