FLASH NPAPI AND PPAPI

[rgerman]

Hello,

I have noticed for a while that the Flash Update settings now show a NPAPI and PPAPI plugins. We use Safari, Chrome and Firefox in our office. I Googled the plug-ins and find it a bit confusing. If the PPAPI plugin is for Chrome and Chrome updates automatically updates this plug-in in the browser. Whats the point of the PPAPI Install now button under System Preferences-> Flash Player?

[mm2270]

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1491485
The thread above seems to explain that Adobe is now shipping a separate installer for the PPAPI Flash Player version (which was previously just part of Chrome only) The Install Now button in the pref pane is just there because its now possible to have both types of plug-ins installed, for testing/debugging purposes, so the UI now shows the state of each type.

tl;dr You can ignore it if you don't need it :)

[davidhiggs]

Last time i looked into this, I believe that:

NPAPI - used by Safari, Firefox
PPAPI - used by Chromium, Opera and Chrome (Chrome's implementation is built in)

I believe PPAPI is the improved plugin architecture for Flash. I haven't bothered to look into it much as we don't really have too many users with Opera or Chromium. I can't say Flash works much better inside Chrome, probably worse if going by the CPU usage!

More here: http://blog.chromium.org/2012/08/the-road-to-safer-more-stable-and.html

[davidhiggs]

ps. Adobe have a Flash Player ESR release, currently v13.0.0.289.

I'm going to begin testing soon for our Mac labs. I'm curious if Safari flags this particular version as 'out of date', or if Apple recognise it as a current ESR release. I'll post my findings if there's anything worth mentioning.

[freddie_cox]

@davidhiggs Apple has added the ESR Flash version to the XProtext.meta.plist (/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.meta.plist) recently so you shouldn't have any blocking issues with Safari if you're keeping up-to-date.

            <key>com.macromedia.Flash Player ESR.plugin</key>
            <dict>
                <key>MinimumPlugInBundleVersion</key>
                <string>13.0.0.281</string>
                <key>PlugInUpdateAvailable</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>

[davidhiggs]

@freddie.cox awesome, thanks for the heads up!

[rgerman]

Does not look like PPAPI is anything I need to install or worry about.

Thanks for all the response's.
Ray

[Sonic84]

looks like Google Chrome will be actively blocking plugins that use the older NPAPI in version 45. Seems like a good opportunity to get rid of the older NPAPI flash plugin system-wide. Is there a normal PKG installer for the PPAPI? I see Adobe is offering their .app install manager for PPAPI...

[#9]

I think that Flash just really misses its papi, which is understandable, right?