24, was thus the last version including NPAPI support.

Last year, Mozilla had pegged March 2017 for the end of NPAPI support.įirefox 51, which Mozilla released Jan. (Edge, IE's successor, never supported ActiveX.) And although Apple's Safari still supports NPAPI plug-ins, the browser has aggressively deprecated their use Safari now blocks plug-ins from launching automatically, for example.īrowser makers have characterized the elimination of NPAPI plug-ins as a security and stability move meant to improve anti-hacking defenses and keep the application up and running.įirefox 52, which has a ship date of March 7, is the first version of Mozilla's browser that will drop support for NPAPI plug-ins, with the sole exception of Flash, noted Michael Kaply, a consultant who specializes in customizing Firefox for businesses. Google banned NPAPI plug-ins from Chrome in 2015 and Opera Software followed suit last year in its flagship Opera browser, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) has always called on its own proprietary ActiveX architecture.

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