Browser plugins

There are two types of browser plugins, based on the plugin API they use:

  • Netscape plugin API (NPAPI): these plugins work in some smaller browsers (Firefox and Chromium no longer support these plugins).
  • Pepper plugin API (PPAPI): these plugins work in some smaller browsers (Chromium no longer supports these plugins).

Related articles

Flash players

Adobe Flash Player
Warning: Adobe Flash Player support ended on 31 December 2020. As a result, the plugins are no longer supported in recent browser. Additionally, the project will no longer receive any bug fixes or security updates.

An older standalone version can be installed with the flashplayer-standaloneAUR package. This package predates the hard coded end-of-life clock being inserted in Flash Player and therefore continues to work.

Lightspark

Lightspark is another attempt to provide a free alternative to Adobe Flash aimed at supporting newer Flash formats. Lightspark has the ability to fall back on Gnash for old content, which enables users to install both and enjoy wider coverage. Although it is still very much in development, it supports some popular sites.

Lightspark can be installed with the lightsparkAUR or lightspark-gitAUR package.

Ruffle

Ruffle is a Flash Player emulator written in Rust. It runs natively as a standalone application, and on all modern browsers through the use of WebAssembly. While still being under active development, decent ActionScript 1.0/2.0 support is in place and improving; ActionScript 3.0 support is in early stages.

Ruffle can be installed with one of the ruffle-gitAUR or packages.

Clean Flash

Clean Flash is built using the FlashPatch utility. It bypasses the January 12th, 2021 killswitch that prevents you from playing any Flash content.

Clean Flash is supposed to be used with browsers that support Flash. Currently, Waterfox Classic, Pale Moon and K-Meleon are known to still support Flash.

Java (IcedTea)

To enable Java support in your browser, you have two options: the open-source OpenJDK (recommended) or Oracle's proprietary version. For details about why OpenJDK is recommended see .

To use OpenJDK, you have to install the IcedTea browser plugin, .

If you want to use Oracle's JRE, install the package.

Multimedia playback

Many browsers support the GStreamer framework to play multimedia inside HTML5 and elements. Check the optional dependencies of the browser package (or of the web engine, e.g. webkit2gtk or qt5-webkitAUR) to see if GStreamer is supported. See GStreamer#Installation for the description of each plugin.

For media formats that are not natively supported by your browser (e.g. most browsers do not play .mkv files), the following plugins are available:

    MozPlugger

    MozPlugger is a NPAPI plugin which can show many types of multimedia inside your browser. To accomplish this, it uses external programs such as MPlayer, xine, Evince, OpenOffice, TiMidity, etc.

    MozPlugger can be installed with the package.

    To modify or add applications to be used by MozPlugger just modify the file. For a more complete list of MozPlugger options see .

    PDF viewers

    Find the lines containing in the file and modify the corresponding line after as below:

    repeat noisy swallow(pdf_reader) fill: pdf_reader "$file"

    When using Firefox, you may need to change 2 values in :

    • Change pdfjs.disabled's value to true;
    • Change plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types's value to an empty value.

    Then restart Firefox to use the plugin.

    Use LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice

    For example, MozPlugger uses OpenOffice by default to open files. To change it to use LibreOffice instead, look for the OpenOffice section: and add LibreOffice at the beginning of the list:

    Open cpp files in Kate

    As another simple example, if you want to open files with your favorite text editor (we will use Kate) to get syntax highlighting, just add a new section to your file:

    Use mpv instead of MPlayer

    To change the default of MPlayer so that mpv is used instead, change the appropriate lines such that:

    gollark: Something is very O(n) here and I have about 300 search results for bee.
    gollark: Site-3371.
    gollark: I mean, postgres has very good caching, so it gets fairly fast if I search for bees multiple times, but whyyyy?
    gollark: Yes.
    gollark: ```sqlnonlocality=# EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT url, ts_rank(fts, query) AS rank, ts_headline(fts::text, query, 'MaxWords=60') FROM pages, websearch_to_tsquery('bee') query WHERE fts @@ query ORDER BY rank LIMIT 1; QUERY PLAN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Limit (cost=860.79..861.06 rows=1 width=96) (actual time=35935.590..35935.594 rows=1 loops=1) -> Result (cost=860.79..874.83 rows=52 width=96) (actual time=35935.587..35935.589 rows=1 loops=1) -> Sort (cost=860.79..860.92 rows=52 width=178) (actual time=35934.109..35934.111 rows=1 loops=1) Sort Key: (ts_rank(pages.fts, query.query)) Sort Method: top-N heapsort Memory: 25kB -> Nested Loop (cost=0.25..860.53 rows=52 width=178) (actual time=444.148..35932.932 rows=349 loops=1) Join Filter: (pages.fts @@ query.query) Rows Removed by Join Filter: 10272 -> Function Scan on websearch_to_tsquery query (cost=0.25..0.26 rows=1 width=32) (actual time=0.038..0.041 rows=1 loops=1) -> Seq Scan on pages (cost=0.00..728.95 rows=10495 width=142) (actual time=10.189..289.581 rows=10621 loops=1) Planning Time: 0.184 ms Execution Time: 35935.637 ms(12 rows)```
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