Comments As discussed in the just released Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes, Adobe has been working closely with Google to develop a single modern API for hosting plugins within the browser (one which could replace the current Netscape plugin API being used by the Flash Player). The PPAPI, code-named “Pepper” aims to provide a layer between the plugin and browser that abstracts away differences between browser and operating system implementations.
Because of this work, Adobe has been able to partner with Google in providing a “Pepper” implementation of Flash Player for all x86/64 platforms supported by the Google Chrome browser. Google will begin distributing this new Pepper-based Flash Player as part of Chrome on all platforms, including Linux, later this year.
For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe. Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release.
Flash Player will continue to support browsers using non-”Pepper” plugin APIs on platforms other than Linux.
We will be providing a debug player implementation of the Flash Player browser plugin on Linux, and will update the whitepaper once we have more details on how it will be distributed.
Doesn’t the NS Plugin API accomplish the same purpose?
If so, wouldn’t it be better to work with Mozilla to fix the flaws in the NS Plugin API?
Or is there a non-technical rationale for creating a different API?
Does this mean that the proprietary Flash player won’t be available for Firefox? I don’t use it myself, but I can see a lot of people being annoyed by this (and people are already pretty annoyed about Flash to begin with).