Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Article: Firefox to block content based on Java, Reader, and Silverlight

Ars Technica reports: "Mozilla engineers plan to disable Java, Adobe Reader, and Microsoft Silverlight capabilities in their flagship Firefox browser in a move aimed at improving security and performance. By default, Firefox will load content based on all three plugins only after users click an icon that explicitly permits it. The feature, known as click to play, was introduced late last year. Until now, it disabled out-of-date plugins to prevent hack attacks and browser crashing. Sometime soon, it will begin blocking all plug-ins except for the most recent version of Adobe Flash." (read the rest of the article)

I have stopped running Java and Adobe Acrobat Reader a long time ago, but I still use Silverlight for Netflix.  Personally I would like to see an end to all plug-ins, I think they can be useful, but offend create more problems (e.g. memory leaks, crashes, and performance issues).  I am looking forward to the greater adoption of standards based technology like HTML 5.

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