Detecting NPAPI support in Chrome using javascript

Question

As Google Chrome is dropping support for NPAPI post September 2015. Is there any way to detect the NPAPI support in chrome using JavaScript so that Alternative content will be load or show warning message to User to use an older version of Chrome.

Answer 1

Had an issue created by chrome 42's disabling of NPAPI. What was done was something in the lines of this: (similar to )

function isJavaAvailable() {    var javaRegex = /(Java)(\(TM\)| Deployment)/,        plugins = navigator.plugins;    if (navigator && plugins) {      for (plugin in plugins){        if(plugins.hasOwnProperty(plugin) &&           javaRegex.exec(plugins[plugin].name)) {          return true;        }      }    }    return false;  }    var chromeVersion = window.navigator.userAgent.match(/Chrome\/(\d+)\./);  if (chromeVersion && chromeVersion[1]) {    if (parseInt(chromeVersion[1], 10) >= 42 && !isJavaAvailable()) {      // do chrome-no-java-related task      console.log('Java not available');    }  }

This is not a direct "NPAPI-detector", but can be rewritten to test for the plugins affected by NPAPI disabling through changing the regex for instance. Regex was used for some kind of robustness. Had a look into navigator.plugins['some-number'].names to find what to check for.