[webkit-dev] NPAPI support to remain?

[Maciej Stachowiak]

> On Jul 13, 2017, at 6:23 PM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro at igalia.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It seems WebKit is the last modern web engine still supporting NPAPI. Is Apple planning to continue supporting NPAPI and WebKitPluginProcess for the foreseeable future? Or is it something that might be removed?
> 
> I am not foolish enough to recommend that anyone use NPAPI, but I am curious about its future in WebKit.

On iOS, we've never supported plugins and don't plan to.

On macOS, Safari has been adding escalating plugin restrictions. Safari hasn't announced any plans to ban most or all plugins. It seems like many other browsers are moving in the direction of Flash-only. I don't think we'd want to run a non-NPAPI Flash, so we could not be able to remove the code unless we entirely removed support for all plugins, including Flash.

I personally (and I think also other WebKit folks at Apple) would be against implementing any alternative plugin APIs, such as PPAPI. Replacing NPAPI with PPAPI would not be a win.

Regards,
Maciej'