Hi I am posting this to the dev mailing list since it was suggested so in the discussion for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=636633 . I am a Java Developer for 20 years and while many of the applets I wrote in these years are not used anymore, there are still some which still are in use and will be for the next couple of years. And they are still in use since there is still no usable alternative to it. For the last couple of years, I was repeatedly faced with issues about the java applet deployment (do to different measures taken by oracle to secure java). So I can say that I am pretty used to these kind of problems, but it's no fun... I know you are all doing a great job by developing Firefox while there are so many other big players with huge budget and I appreciate your work, even if I do not use FF personally.
Nevertheless I would like to point you towards a problem, which I am sure you are kind of aware of since it has been discussed for months already. But it seems there is still no solution to it. Oracle suggests how we (Java Developers or Webmasters using Java Applets) shall include Applets into WebPages. You can read about that here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/deployment_advice.html If you like to do it browser-neutral and prepared for use in the internet and the intranet, you will use the "JNLP" Approach using the deployJava.js library provided by Oracle: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/deployingApplet.html This is perfect for most Browsers (older FF, IE's, Chromes, Opera's, ...), but it's kind of broken in recent FF's. You can easily checkout what happens to FF users when they hit a page which uses the deployJava.js using the Example provided by Oracle: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/deployingApplet.html or by using our plugin at http://home.rega-sense.ch/schlegel/FF_breaks_Java/3ce3a415_1250680166f_4a_jv.html (it is a stripped-down version containing only the essential parts, some applet functionality is not working, but it should load a sequence flow diagram at least). Here is what actually happens, if you have the actual version of java installed: FF tells the user, that his version of the Java Plugin is insecure and points him to https://blocklist.addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/blocked/p428 where he can find another link from July 2013: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=636633 For an end user, there is no other conclusion, than that Java still has the described issue. So average user will not activate the applet and complain about it. -*-> So issue #1 with the solution chosen by FF: The Plugin Blocker seems to not take the Java Plugin version into account.* But let's assume that the user anyway chooses to activate the plugin. Then we come to a second problem: The Page shows two click-to-play squares as described on https://confluence.topease.ch/confluence/x/JIAXAQ (see screenshot there). One box for the deployment toolkit and one for the plugin itself. Most of the users will click the "Activate Java" Link of the lower square since it is not red but "only" gray. A popup opens where the user can accept to run the applet permanently (as shown in the third screenshot on the confluence page). Unfortunately, this popup only shows one of the two plugins. The other one remains hidden. After the user hits "ok", one of the two click-to-play squares will load the code correctly (in my case it was the little square in the upper right with the red icon), but unfortunately the other one won't load and still displays the click-to-play square. The user can hit the "Activate Java" link and choose "OK" in the popup as often as he likes without any change anymore. The second click-to-play window will not disappear anymore! *--> So this is issue #2 with the chosen solution: An average user is not able to activate the applet. The click-to-play link is not correctly coupled with the popup's content, since the popup shows the wrong click-to-play item... * What the user actually needs to do is hitting the "Show all" button and accept all click to play warnings at once. While playing around with this problem, I recognized, that the popup will show both click-to-play entries when the user hits the red icon near the URL. This is a joke. It is pure luck whether a user finds this functionality or not. It took myself two hours of playing around with it to find out what happens and why. This is not acceptable for average endusers. Note that I am using the most recent FF (35.0.1) as well as the most recent Java Runtime ( 7.0.760.13). Finally, I hope this clarifies why so many users are complaining about the current click-to-play solution chosen by FF. Sincerely, Markus Schlegel _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
