Oracle prepares to say goodbye to the Java browser plug-in

Oracle announces it's saying goodbye to the Java browser plug-in. The company says the plug-in will be deprecated in JDK 9 and recommends developers to migrate to newer (and more secure) technology. Not that it really matters, as most modern browsers already announced plans to drop plug-in support. Chrome removed NPAPI support almost a year ago, Firefox is dropping it by the end of the year and Edge has no support for plug-ins.

By late 2015, many browser vendors have either removed or announced timelines for the removal of standards based plugin support, eliminating the ability to embed Flash, Silverlight, Java and other plugin based technologies.

With modern browser vendors working to restrict and reduce plugin support in their products, developers of applications that rely on the Java browser plugin need to consider alternative options such as migrating from Java Applets (which rely on a browser plugin) to the plugin-free Java Web Start technology.

Oracle plans to deprecate the Java browser plugin in JDK 9. This technology will be removed from the Oracle JDK and JRE in a future Java SE release.