Re: Java plugin phase out timeline

On 2/23/16 10:03 AM, Java Dev wrote:
> Hope all is well. The company I work for uses Java applets for our web products and we are currently planning our release schedules to replace Java applet tech, as it will affect many users in our product community and several products. As such, our dev team would like to better understand the "drop dead date" of when the Java plugin will stop working in Firefox.
>
> We are aware that the announcement was for end of 2016, but wanted to confirm if there is a more specific date other than 12/31/2016. Also, we would like to know if Firefox will follow a similar path as Chrome to provide a way to still manually enable the Java plugin for some time (disabled by default), perhaps even past end of 2016.


hi Alexandra, our tentative schedule is to remove NPAPI support in 
Firefox 53 (which will be in the Firefox Nightly channel in November 
2016 and released in April 2017). These versions or dates are not 
official or set in stone. They could conceivably be postponed if we need 
to continue supporting NPAPI for some reason.

The next Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) version is 52 and will 
receive security updates for a year. By removing NPAPI in Firefox 53, 
the release *after* the ESR, users that need NPAPI support can continue 
to switch to Firefox ESR 52 and keep using NPAPI plugins until May 2018.


chris