Oracle to kill off Java browser plugins at last

But only after the release of JDK 9

Oracle has announced plans to kill off Java browser plugins - but only after it releases Java Development Kit (JDK) 9.

The company announced the shift in a Java Platform Group blog post, which admitted that the end was nigh for browser 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," it suggested.

Even Microsoft has urged organisations to desist from using Silverlight, the company's video content delivery system, and to use HTML 5 instead.

The Oracle blog post continued: "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."

The introduction - at last - of HTML 5, as well as an escalating series of security flaws in browser plugins, has forced both Adobe and Oracle to discontinue plugins for their popular apps, and to persuade developers to shift either to HTML 5 as an alternative delivery mechanism for videos, or Java Web Start in the case of Oracle.

The browser plug-in goes back to Netscape Navigator 2.0. Released in 1995, some of us are old enough to remember the excitement in certain quarters that the new browser elicited, before Netscape got squashed by a combination of its own hubris and ineptitude, and Microsoft's hard-nosed competitive rivalry.

Microsoft, of course, ended up at the sharp end of an anti-trust investigation over the way that it fought the competitive threat posed by Netscape, and using anti-competitive practices to undermine alternatives to the Internet Explorer web browser. Back in the 1990s, of course, it was conjectured that the browser would surpass the operating system in importance.