Chrome Will Remove NPAPI Support in 2015

Google hoped to remove the support for NPAPI plug-ins this feature, but that will have to wait until next year. The NPAPI support will be completely removed in September 2015.

Chrome whitelisted some of the most popular NPAPI plug-ins like Silverlight or Google Talk. As their usage continued to decline, the whitelist will be removed in January and users will have to manually enable the plug-ins.



As you can see from the table below, the only plug-in used by more than 10% of the Chrome users is Silverlight and it's followed by Google Talk, which is still used by 7% of the Chrome users. Java usage declined from 8.9% to 3.7%, Facebook's plug-in usage declined from 6% to 3%, while Unity is only used by 1.9% of the Chrome users, down from 9.1% in September 2013.

In April 2015 NPAPI support will be disabled and Google will unpublish from the Chrome Web Store the extensions that require NPAPI plugins. Power users and business users will still be able to enable NPAPI using Chrome flags or Enterprise Policy, but only until September 2015, when NPAPI support will be completely removed. There's a deprecation guide for developers which offers a few alternatives to NPAPI, including HTML5, WebRTC, Chrome APIs for apps and extensions and Native Client.



NPAPI is a legacy technology that enabled a lot of powerful features, back when browsers couldn't play videos, handle video calls or run games. You had to install QuickTime or RealPlayer to play videos, install plug-ins for Google Talk or other video calling apps, install Java or Flash to play games. Now browsers are a lot more powerful and the features that are still not supported by Chrome can be enabled by more secure NPAPI alternatives like PPAPI and Native Client, which are unfortunately still only available in Chrome.

Create a Tree View of your Google Drive

If you have ever worked with DOS or Linux before, you’ll be familiar with the “tree” command that recursively lists all the files and folders in the current directory in a tree like format. Most of us prefer visual navigation through Windows Explorer or Mac Finder but a unique advantage with the tree command is that you can save and print the directory structure.

Tree Command for your Google Drive

I have written a little Google Script that is much like running “tree” but against your Google Drive. It creates a hierarchical tree diagram of all the files and folders in your Google Drive that you can save for offline reference or even print.

To get started, click here and authorize the script to access the files in your Google Drive. Once the authorization is complete, it may take a minute to generate the entire Google Drive tree. You’ll then get a link to download an HTML file that mirrors your Drive structure. You can directly send the file to the printer as well.

Internally, all the script does is recursive traversal and the tree itself is sylized through simple CSS. In the current version, only the folder names in the tree are linked to their corresponding location in your Google Drive though the script can be easily extended to create a more data-rich tree that includes details like file URLs, sharing permissions, file sizes, file types and so on.

The process may take slightly longer if you have a large drive with tons of file and folders. Also, as soon as you authorize the Google Drive Tree script, you’ll get an email from Google with instructions on how to revoke access. You can do so as soon as the tree has been generated.

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The story, Create a Tree View of your Google Drive , was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 25/11/2014 under Google Drive, Internet.