Alternative of NPAPI plugins for Flash / Java Applet

Question

My question is regarding chrome announcement of Not supporting the NPAPI plugins post December, 2014. Firefox is also following the same. I have a NPAPI based plugin in one of my legacy application and that was doing well till now but after announcements from chrome and Firefox I am looking for alternative.

I want to ask from experts that :

1. What could be alternative options for NPAPI ?

2. For new Option, do I need to write some fresh component or Can I make some wrapper around My plugin and use it in my application. Few examples will be appreciated

3. Will other options be browser specific?

Any help and suggestions will be highly appreciated .

Answer 1

This question can't be answered in general: There will be no single alternative that allows you to do everything that Flash & Java plugins can.

You need to figure out what specifically you need that isn't supported by all the new WebAPIs etc. Alternative options to that are communicating with a local service you installed or browser-specific solutions like extensions, NaCl, ...
Whatever you end up choosing, you will end up having to rewrite your solution.

Once you run into more specific questions, you should ask those.

Side-note: Firefox won't drop NPAPI support in the near future, but it started to default most plugins to click-to-play.

Answer 2

It depends on an certain amount of cases:

1) Do you have ownership of the source code of that NPAPI-plugin and/or legacy application?

-> If yes, consider to rewrite the logic of that application in JavaScript. Use standardized methods preferably.

-> If no, consider to use the latest NPAPI-supporting version of FireFox / Chrome in a secure virtualized enviroment.

2) Does your legacy application need to be accessed via a internet browser? (Note: nothing bad about that, deploying applet- and flash-apps via the internet browser is very easy, without much hassle at the sides of the users and developers...till more restrictive security policies were implemented in the latest versions...).

-> If yes, see the same answer at (1).

--> Another option could be to rewrite the logic of the application as Add-ons / Extensions. However, you've to write at least 2 of them...

-> If no, consider to write a wrapper around your application to make it run as a stand-alone application. Deployment to other users will be a bit harder though.