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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday January 31 2017, @02:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the next-they-will-kill-kenny dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Google made a change in Chrome 57 that removes options from the browser to manage plugins such as Google Widevine, Adobe Flash, or the Chrome PDF Viewer.

If you load chrome://plugins in Chrome 56 or earlier, a list of installed plugins is displayed to you. The list includes information about each plugin, including a name and description, location on the local system, version, and options to disable it or set it to "always run".

You can use it to disable plugins that you don't require. While you can do the same for some plugins, Flash and PDF Viewer, using Chrome's Settings, the same is not possible for the DRM plugin Widevine, and any other plugin Google may add to Chrome in the future.

Starting with Chrome 57, that option is no longer available. This means essentially that Chrome users won't be able to disable -- some -- plugins anymore, or even list the plugins that are installed in the web browser.

Please note that this affects Google Chrome and Chromium.

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/29/google-removes-plugin-controls-from-chrome/


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday January 31 2017, @03:04PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday January 31 2017, @03:04PM (#461237) Journal

    Vivaldi came up yesterday, which I use despite its warts as my main browser. It's at least worth a shot, and it uses Chrome's extensions. I just checked vivaldi://plugins, and as of 1.6.689.40 at least Widevine and the Chromium PDF viewer can be disabled yet. I don't expect that will go away just given how customizable the thing is. Themes remain a weak area compared to Seamonkey and Firefox.

    Pale Moon is also a good alternative, but unfortunately it's Windows only. Otter [otter-browser.org] also looks worth a shot.

    I haven't used Midori [midori-browser.org] in a while. It's mostly there but crashy under Windows. Good for general browsing, but I found that pretty much anything involving a shopping cart is broken in it. A shame too because it's really lightweight. A Chromium compile on my Gentoo box can take over six hours, but that thing's compiled and merged well under an hour iirc.

    Seamonkey has been a stable, reliable fallback for a browser, and it's still my mail client of choice in Windows since I need HTML mail at work. (Claws Mail for home where I don't give a rip about HTML mail.) I'm really hoping Seamonkey will continue to follow updates from Firefox and Thunderbird without pulling in the mental retardation. It's good to have something solid around without all the bells and whistles.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @03:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @03:25PM (#461250)

    Pale Moon runs on Linux and there is a third-party build available for Mac OS X. Stop spreading misinformation.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:48PM

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:48PM (#461293) Journal

      Good catch. Binaries here [palemoon.org].

      Additionally, Pale Moon is included in and can be installed directly from the default repositories of the following distros:

      - Manjaro
      - PCLinuxOS
      - Puppy Linux
      - MEPIS/MX-15
      - Arch User Repository (AUR)
      - Gentoo Overlays [here? [github.com]]
      - Slackbuilds

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:23PM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:23PM (#461276) Homepage Journal

    Midori is pleasant under Linux, but I'm using firefox instead since Google disconinued Chrome on my machine.

    The Midori I tried is the one packaged by my distro, Devuan,

    Observations about Midori:

    (1) I can't figure out how to import bookmarks from Firefox or Chrome.

    (2) When I use file:// to access files on my local hard drive, it doesn't sort them into any recognisable kind of alphabetical order.

    (3) And I can't find documentation or a forum on which to discuss these matters. It's items (1) to (3) that really get in my way.

    (4) This one is minor. There's something off in the spacing of letters within words. Not sure what.

    Otherwise, it's quite pleasant to use.

    -- hendrik

    • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday February 01 2017, @02:04AM

      by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday February 01 2017, @02:04AM (#461517)

      Google disconinued Chrome on my machine.

      I'm running Devuan and Chromium 55 is in the repo for me. You weren't expecting the closed source Chrome in a Debian based distro, right? If you really want it there is a .deb available from Google. So unless you are still living in the dark ages with a 32bit machine you are good to go.

      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:49PM

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:49PM (#462854) Homepage Journal

        Thanks for the reminder. Chromium now installed. I wasn't expecting it to stay around for my 32-bit machine after Google dropped 32-bit Chrome. Well, 32-bit Chrome still runs, but it is no longer updated or patched, so it is probably a security risk and I do not use it. But I see 32-bit Chromium is still advancing in version numbers, presumably in step with 64-bit chrome.

  • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:47PM

    by dyingtolive (952) on Tuesday January 31 2017, @04:47PM (#461289)

    I just installed Vivaldi. I'm going to give it a test run today, but so far, I could see myself replacing chrome with it as my new standard.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!