That’s right 10 years ago today, a Blog was Born! Honestly, I am surprised it has last this long (and I am not just talking about the blog). A lot has happened in the last 10 years in the browser ‘market’. While Internet Explorer is still around (and sadly not by choice for some users who are stuck using IE for certain essential websites), there is a lot more choice in web browsers now. Even Microsoft introduced a new (and crippled) browser with Windows 10. Microsoft Edge, a browser so useless it pushes users over the edge. Netscape is long…
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As we reported earlier, on December 17th NetFlix has started offering HTML5 videos for Firefox users. While this not a big deal for the Win32 users as they could still use Silverlight with Firefox, this is not the case for the Firefox Win64 users. The newly released Win64 Firefox browser does not support NPAPI plugins (except Flash). Note: Silverlight is planned on being supported with the upcoming Win64 version of Firefox 44. However, by the end of 2016 Mozilla plans on removing support for the very outdated NPAPI plugins (except Flash) from Win32 and Win64 versions of Firefox. Google Chrome ended support earlier this…
People are still complaining about how Mozilla is removing support for NPAPI plugins (Silverlight and Java specifically) in the upcoming Windows 64-Bit release of Firefox (now tentatively scheduled for Firefox 42 in November) even though the move is not that unusual given the trend to move away from NPAPI plugins by other browsers. Microsoft’s Edge Browser (Windows 10 only) does not support Active X or any of the NPAPI plugins (Flash is integrated not a plugin). On Tuesday, September 1st Google released Chrome 45 which ended the browser’s support of NPAPI plugins as well. I found this out when I…
I understand what Mozilla is doing with in the Win64 Firefox in regards to only allowing the Flash NPAPI plugin. It starts to make sense if you look at the browser ‘market’ as a whole. Microsoft’s new Edge browser (Windows 10) does not support SilverLight and Java and neither does/will Chrome (Google plans to phase out NPAPI plugins by end of 2015). All of these browsers including the Win64 Firefox do support Flash. Also, remember Flash is integrated (no plugin) into Chrome as Google bribed paid Adobe to build a custom version of Flash directly into Chrome. It is almost painful…
What do the upcoming Firefox 41 (Windows 64-Bit) and Chrome 45 have in common? Neither will support Microsoft Silverlight. However, Netflix will continue to work on Chrome 45, because Netflix on Chrome use HTML5, not Silverlight. The same can not be said for Firefox though, where Netflix still uses Silverlight. Up until Firefox 33 in October 2014, with the introduction of the Open H.264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems plugin Firefox did not support HTML5. But, Netflix (being a paid service) uses DRM which was not supported until Firefox 38 in May 2015 when Mozilla added the Primetime Content Decryption Module by Adobe…
So, still no official (or even unofficial) explanation from Mozilla as to why they suddenly (as in July 9th) banished Silverlight NPAPI from the upcoming Win64 Firefox releases. Mozilla’s silence on this dramatic change with the Win64 Fx is a bad thing for things to come. Why are they being so secretive? Why choose the worse of two evils (Flash)? Why continue to support a plugin that everyone (including Facebook) is trying to move away from (Flash > HTML5)? So yesterday the discussion in Bug 1165981 (this was the bug that was suppose to Whitelist BOTH Flash and Silverlight NPAPI in…
After posting Firefox Win64 Supports Only Flash I got to thinking I knew I had seen a comment recently in Bugzilla about ‘video changes’ in Firefox for Win64. Looking through the bugs I am following, I found Bug 1181014 which basically was proposal to allow users to download win64 builds from everywhere, not only on the /all/ pages. The /all page referred to here is the Systems & Languages link on the Firefox download/landing page. This link takes the user to page where they can see all the localization builds and supported operating systems of Firefox. The first time I saw…
This is a really an odd one and it affects both Chrome and Firefox (possibly Safari as well), but NOT Internet Explorer. If you have had unexplained crashes while/after visiting a WordPress (WP) site, it is possible it could be caused by this bug. The good news is this bug has been reported to Mozilla [Bug 1174811] and it was patched on Wednesday (June 17th). Just not sure yet when it is going to be pushed out. Firefox 39 is due out in less than two weeks (June 30th), but then there could also be a 38.0.6 release between now and then (though…
Last night Mozilla announced on The Mozilla Security Blog: Deprecating Non-Secure HTTP. There’s pretty broad agreement that HTTPS is the way forward for the web. In recent months, there have been statements from IETF, IAB (even the other IAB), W3C, and the US Governmentcalling for universal use of encryption by Internet applications, which in the case of the web means HTTPS. After a robust discussion on our community mailing list, Mozilla is committing to focus new development efforts on the secure web, and start removing capabilities from the non-secure web. While they don’t specify in details as to “removing capabilities from…
Google researchers announced recently of the POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) Attack which hackers take advantage of sites (around 0.3%) still using the outdated (introduced in 1996) SSLv3 security protocol. Mozilla has announced that SSLv3 will be disabled, unfortunately it won’t be until Firefox 34 which will be released on November 25th. However, user can (and are urged to) install the SSL Version Control extension which will disable SSLv3 on the fly. I would not be surprised though if Mozilla pushes out Firefox 33.1 update to have SSLv3 disabled in the coming days or weeks. Google Chrome is already testing changes to disable…