Oracle Does World A Favor Buy Dumping Wretched Java Browser Plugin

It now looks as though we can chalk up yet another win for computer users around the globe, as Oracle has announced that it is “moving to a plugin-free web” from this point forward. And thankfully, that means that demise of the hated Java browser plugin. Like Adobe Flash, the Java plugin has long been a dangerous security risk for Windows and Mac computers, with hackers taking advantage of poor coding to deliver malicious payloads.

Oracle has finally seen the writing on the wall, stating in a blog post that it will “deprecate the Java browser plugin in JDK 9.” Oracle goes on to explain that the plugin “will be removed from the Oracle JDK and JRE in a future Java SE release.”

(Image Source: Rob Shenk)

And if you think that Oracle may be going to back to the drawing board to work on a brand plugin based on emerging standards like the Pepper Plug-in API (PPAPI), guess again. The company writes in a Java migration whitepaper [PDF] for developers:

Oracle does not plan to provide additional browser-specific plugins as such plugins would require application developers to write browser-specific applets for each browser they wish to support. Moreover, without a cross-browser API, Oracle would only be able to offer a subset of the required functionality, different from one browser to the next, impacting both application developers and users.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief thanks to this news, although recent moves by browser makers to nix support for plugins altogether made the move inevitable.

Oracle’s announcement comes roughly two months after we learned that Adobe Flash, which is probably one of the most hated pieces of software on the Internet, would be put on the back burner to focus on HTML5 development. Besides Flash being an ongoing security risk, it’s a resource hog, often battering laptop batteries with reckless abandon.