Google Chrome will no longer support Java due to phased out support for NPAPI

Last year Google's Chrome developers made the decision to phase out support for the deprecated NPAPI (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) plugin architecture. It started via a whitelist system that only allowed a couple of trusted plugins to run by default but starting with the newly released Chrome 42, NPAPI is disabled by default. This may create a small support nightmare as there are unfortunately still a lot of outdated sites and services that require Java, especially in the government sector.

Users who absolutely need NPAPI can still enable it manually by toggling a flag in Chrome's settings menu but by September 2015 that option will disappear permanently. The big implication here is that Chrome will no longer support Oracle's Java, as that plug-in uses the outdated NPAPI architecture. It's unknown if Oracle has plans to rewrite its plug-in.

In April 2015 (Chrome 42) NPAPI support will be disabled by default in Chrome and we will unpublish extensions requiring NPAPI plugins from the Chrome Web Store. All NPAPI plugins will appear as if they are not installed, as they will not appear in the navigator.plugins list nor will they be instantiated (even as a placeholder).

Although plugin vendors are working hard to move to alternate technologies, a small number of users still rely on plugins that haven’t completed the transition yet. We will provide an override for advanced users (via chrome://flags/#enable-npapi) and enterprises (via Enterprise Policy) to temporarily re-enable NPAPI (via the page action UI) while they wait for mission-critical plugins to make the transition. In addition, setting any of the plugin Enterprise policies (e.g. EnabledPlugins, PluginsAllowedForUrls) will temporarily re-enable NPAPI.

Source: The Register