Take the 2-minute tour ×

I have NPAPI browser plugin for Chrome,Firefox for a USB device. This plugin allows silver light web application to communicate with the USB device.

Interaction involve
1.data transfer
2.querying USB device for info
3. and saving data in to USB device.
Recently Chrome announced that it is not gonna support the NPAPI plugin in future.

I have found PPAPI support will be there in chrome but it is not a standard and it will not work on firefox and other browser.Is there other way to achieve without using plugin. Do we have any other solution for this issue?

share|improve this question
add comment

2 Answers

For Chrome, Native Messaging from an extension (also linked from the blog post you referenced) is likely the best replacement.

As for it being "non standard", in general you probably shouldn't expect anything that's not part of the actual web platform itself to be standard across browsers. (Note that NPAPI isn't really a standard in the formal web sense, and in practice it wasn't standard in the sense of being ubiquitous given that IE has never supported it, and Windows 8 Metro browsers, Chrome OS, all browsers on iOS, and Chrome on Android don't support it either.)

share|improve this answer
add comment

For Firefox, using js-ctypes from an extension should work for you. Alternatively you could look into mechanisms for communicating with a native application that works cross-browser (e.g. WebSockets? The FireBreath developer mailing list has some recent discussions on this).

share|improve this answer
Presently I needed solution for chrome.It would be good if i get cross browser support.Do we have any example for web socket.How it communicate with USB devices.I heard it is only supported in HTML 5. –  Chris_vr Oct 1 '13 at 5:55
The question sounded like you're looking for a solution for both. WebSocket would allow you to communicate with a native app which could do the actual work. In older browsers you should be able to use fallbacks/drop-ins, e.g. Flash-based ones. –  Georg Fritzsche Oct 1 '13 at 10:37
@Thanks George for reply.Will Web Socket supported in older browser I mean in html 4 –  Chris_vr Oct 1 '13 at 11:20
You will need relatively new browsers, see e.g. here. However, older browsers definitely allow plugins, so you can use opaque fallbacks. Check e.g. this question. –  Georg Fritzsche Oct 1 '13 at 14:52
add comment

Your Answer


