485832 - Plugin Finder Service should support Silverlight (application/x-silverlight-2)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit Graveyard :: Plugin Finder Service, enhancement)

Description

[u212413]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032609 Firefox/3.0.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; de; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032609 Firefox/3.0.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

If somewhere a file is embedded, for which you don't have the necessary plugin, a "additional plugins are required..." bar appears. The Plugin Finder Service then tries to find the plugin. But it doesn't find Silverlight if a Silverlight file is embedded somewhere.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Don't have Silverlight installed
2. Go to http://www.heise.de/developer/ (disable Adblock etc)
3. "plugins required" bar appears on the top of the
4. Click on "Install Missing Plugins..." button on the bar
Actual Results:  
Plugin Finder Service doesn't find anything. (Unknown Plugin)
Screenshot: http://www.abload.de/img/pluginfinder0aj6.png

Expected Results:  
- Plugin Finder Service should find and download the plugin.
- If this is not possible, it should provide a download link to a website where the plugin can be downloaded.

MIME-Types:
application/x-silverlight (Silverlight 1.0)
application/x-silverlight-2 (Silverlight 2)
See: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc265156(VS.95).aspx

Comment 1

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

cc'ing Kev.

I guess including silverlight into pfs would require to fill out https://wiki.mozilla.org/PFS#New_Plugin_Checklist from someone from the plugin vendor i guess

Comment 2

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Attachment: v.1 Basic silverlight manual install support

Here's a patch for basic Silverlight support for manual installation. If we don't specify an image or direct download link then it's still better than nothing and likely wouldn't need permission from MS since we'd just be providing a link like plugincheck.  If this is suitable for the short-term then let me know and I will request review.

Comment 3

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Bug 836415 has now removed the Plugin Finder Service (PFS) from Firefox. As a result, I'm closing all the remaining PFS bugs.

If you're getting this bugmail for an ancient PFS bug, the basic summary of the world today is:

* NPAPI plugins are a dying technology
* PFS was already restricted to assisting with only the 4 most common plugins
* Sites commonly provide their own UI for install a required plugin
* Mozilla is generally focusing on  improving the web platform so that proprietary plugins are not required.

(Note that "plugins" are a completely separate from "browser extensions", such at those found on addons.mozilla.org. The latter are not going anywhere, and are not impacted by the removal of PFS.)