#noplugin

For simple FLV container files, NoPlugin will download them for playback with VLC Media Player. For more complex SWF animations, NoPlugin will walk you through opening the URL in Adobe’s Flash Projector desktop application. Flash Projector is essentially a self-contained Flash Player, and it’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

The major ‘catch’ right now is that NoPlugin can’t detect Flash objects in pages that use JavaScript to check if you have Flash installed. A ‘compatibility mode’ feature for NoPlugin is under development that will (hopefully) fix this issue, but it’s not ready yet.

Also, if you use a browser that still supports Flash (such as Firefox ESR), you don’t have to worry about NoPlugin interfering. NoPlugin checks if Flash is installed before replacing anything, and it won’t replace Flash objects if the plugin is installed and functional.

This update also improves support for Windows Media detection, and fixes a bug where some NoPlugin players would be invisible. Thanks to the people who reported those bugs via GitHub and email!

Download for Chrome

Download for Opera

The major change in this release is that NoPlugin can now read playlist files in Windows Media (.wpl, .asx), QuickTime (.qtl), RealPlayer (.ram), and M3U (.m3u) format. Why is this important, you may ask? Well, as it turns out, many web pages used to embed playlists linking to multiple media files. I only found out that was a thing when a bug report came in about a page embedding a file I had never heard of.

When a page is trying to embed a playlist file, NoPlugin will now read the file and obtain the full URL to each linked media file. If there’s just one file in the playlist (which was usually the case), NoPlugin will replace the embedded plugin like normal. If there are multiple files, you’ll get a full list with download links for each file, or you can choose to open the URL with a native media player.

You can download NoPlugin for your browser of choice using the below links, though v5.2 isn’t completely rolled out yet.

Download for Opera

Download for Chrome

Improved media support

Before this update, NoPlugin determined if the browser could play a certain file by looking at the file ending — .mov, .mp3, and so on. This might seem logical, but many media files are actually containers, with wildly varying video and audio codecs. The file ending doesn’t tell the full story.

Starting with version 5.0, NoPlugin will now attempt to play every plugin media file in your browser. If the media file has a supported video and/or audio codec, it should play. If there’s an error, NoPlugin will offer to download the file to your computer, just as before.

This change in behavior allows many QuickTime files (.mov, .qt) to be played inside the browser, since many QuickTime files use the H.264 video codec with AAC/MP3 audio codecs — all of which are commonly used by HTML5 video in MP4 containers.

Better performance

For this release, most of NoPlugin’s codebase has been rewritten to use regular JavaScript instead of jQuery. Not only does this slightly improve loading times and overall performance, but it also reduces memory usage. In my testing, NoPluigin 5.0 used around 2/3 the RAM as NoPlugin 4.0.

Internet Archive compatibility

NoPlugin 5.0 also improves compatibility with pages saved in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. When loading a page hosted on the Internet Archive, NoPlugin adds the proper Archive web address ( web.archive.org/web/...) to the front of the media URL. This allows many previously-broken media embeds to now work, like this trailer of The Dark Knight on Apple’s website from 2006.

There is still additional work to be done in this area (only the bottom trailer on the above page works), but I’ll save that for the next update.

Chrome OS integration

Chromebooks have always been one of the main focuses for NoPlugin. While you can still use Internet Explorer on Windows to view plugin content, or old builds of Firefox or Chrome on Mac, NoPlugin is the only option for playing plugin content on Chrome OS.

On Chromebooks, NoPlugin 5.0 adds a new ‘Open in VLC for Android’ button to plugin objects that can’t be played in the browser. If your Chromebook has support for Android apps, clicking this button will open the media URL instantly in the Android version of VLC Media Player.

This doesn’t always work, due to some jankiness with Android’s Intent URL scheme, but it’s still a great feature. When it doesn’t work, you still have the option of downloading the file (which can then be played with the Android or Chrome OS versions of VLC Media Player).

Download NoPlugin

NoPlugin 5.0 is rolling out right now on the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-ons repository. It’s currenty waiting to be approved for Opera.

Download for Opera

Download for Chrome