WebAssembly avoids this problem entirely. Many of the security flaws that those platforms suffered were due to their sandboxing being weaker than the one the browser provided. Java, Flash, and Silverlight all provided virtual machines of their own, but they did so outside of the browser's standard sandbox. WebAssembly is intended to be an efficient bytecode that can be run effectively by JavaScript virtual machines. In 2015, development of WebAssembly ("Wasm" for short) was started by Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Update: The ESR builds of Firefox 52 (though not the main version) will also have NPAPI enabled, offering another option that will soon have legacy status.īut just as one era of Web extensibility ends, another begins.
WHICH OLDER VERSIONS OF FIREFOX ARE GOOD WINDOWS
Internet Explorer 10 is supported on Windows Server 2012 until October 2023. Internet Explorer 9 is supported in Windows Vista until April and on Windows Server 2008 until January 2020. Internet Explorer 11, running on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10, continues to support the ActiveX versions of Java and Silverlight, but this browser is now in strict maintenance mode, with Microsoft only providing essential security fixes.
AdvertisementĪll that are left are legacy browsers. This change means that there is now no actively maintained, supported, modern browser that supports the use of the Java or Silverlight plugins. Chrome removed NPAPI support in September 2015, and Internet Explorer dropped it years ago Microsoft's Edge browser includes neither NPAPI nor ActiveX plugin support.
Other plugins, including Java, Silverlight, and Acrobat, are no longer supported. Google dropped Windows XP and Windows Vista support in Chrome in April 2016.Īs such, users of those operating systems will still have an actively patched browser for a little while longer, but their days are numbered.įirefox 52 also gets rid of another bit of legacy: plugins using the old NPAPI plugin model, first introduced by Netscape back in the 1990s, are no longer supported, with just one exception: Flash. Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP at all, and Windows Vista drops out of extended support on April 11, 2017. New features, however, will be restricted to the mainline version of Firefox. Firefox 52 is an Extended Support Release it will receive security fixes (and only security fixes) for approximately one year. Future major versions of the browser will require at a minimum Windows 7.
The release is the final major version to support two legacy operating systems: Windows XP and Windows Vista. Firefox 52 is out today, and it's a landmark release for a couple of reasons.