30

I have Silverlight 5 installed on my Windows 8.1 64-bit computer. When I try to watch Amazon Instant Video I get a prompt telling me to install Silverlight for better quality. I also can't get Silverlight tests to run.

There's nothing wrong with my installation. I just have to use Internet Explorer for Silverlight.

Louis Waweru
  • 23,945
  • 39
  • 132
  • 198
  • 2
    Silverlight is EOL. Amazon, too, will probably soon(-ish) completely switch to Flash or maybe HTML5 with MSE and EME. – Daniel B May 14 '15 at 21:46

3 Answers3

30

In September 2013, Google announced its decision to move away from support for NPAPI (the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface). In Chrome 42 NPAPI is disabled by default, disallowing plugins like Silverlight and Java. Threat Report explains, "NPAPI’s 90s-era architecture has become a leading cause of hangs, crashes, security incidents, and code complexity."

There are other APIs that companies like Microsoft and Oracle can use to modernize their web-plugins and one can expect them to be updated to support these alternative options, but for now, as per this article from Microsoft Microsoft Silverlight may not work in recent versions of Google Chrome, you'll need to do the following:

  1. Paste this into chrome chrome://flags/#enable-npapi
  2. Select Enable
  3. When using the site, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc... you need to right click the content and click Run this Plugin
  4. (optional) laugh at Chrome for underestimating superuser
criticabug
  • 103
  • 5
td512
  • 5,031
  • 2
  • 18
  • 41
  • Silverlight is not present even though I've reinstalled it many times. (Why laught at Amazon, btw?) – Louis Waweru May 11 '15 at 05:10
  • answer updated, let me know if that doesn't work – td512 May 11 '15 at 05:17
  • Awesome. BTW, IE is insecure, and should never be used, hence why IE is being culled by MS – td512 May 11 '15 at 05:23
  • Eh, I don't think that's why. They could cull ActiveX and keep Trident. I think they just don't like Trident anymore. – Louis Waweru May 11 '15 at 05:26
  • 1
    True. Shall we agree to say IE was a failure on MS's part, and hopefully Edge will be better – td512 May 11 '15 at 05:28
  • Haha, it was definitely slow to embrace the possibilities of the web. I guess there's a reason I was using Firefox and later Chrome. +1, sure would be nice to not have to install a browser as one of the first TODOs :) – Louis Waweru May 11 '15 at 05:30
  • 4
    I think Edge is still using Trident. I've personally taken to calling it "Internet Explorer 12" for that very reason. Also, IE wasn't a total failure. At one point it was considered the best browser out there, cutting short the life of Netscape. – TSJNachos117 May 11 '15 at 07:26
  • 1
    Until mozilla came along – td512 May 11 '15 at 07:40
  • The alternative method is required for Java to work on Google Chrome. They did a somewhat bad decision... – Ismael Miguel May 11 '15 at 08:47
  • 1
    @TSJNachos117 - Edge will not be using Trident, Microsoft has made it clear, Edge is using a forked version of the Trident engine without any of the legacy support. – Ramhound May 11 '15 at 12:40
  • @IsmaelMiguel - Why? npapi is a security risk and any plugin that still uses it needs to die in a fire. – Ramhound May 11 '15 at 12:40
  • @Ramhound They broke compatibility without **any** warning to the end-user. And the plugin makers didn't had that (much) time to think about it. If I'm wrong, please, gently correct me. – Ismael Miguel May 11 '15 at 12:46
  • 6
    @IsmaelMiguel - Google annouced they were going to do this since [2013](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying-goodbye-to-our-old-friend-npapi.html) which they originally annouced their plan. They later changed it to 2015 in [Nov 2014](http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html). This has been a long been planned. Sept 2015 cannot come soon enough. Google was more then public about their plans with npapi – Ramhound May 11 '15 at 12:49
  • @Ramhound Then how come that Java8 won't work without it? (Silverlight is expected, because, well, it's Microsoft) – Ismael Miguel May 11 '15 at 12:56
  • 3
    @IsmaelMiguel - Java is a npapi plug-in. Silverlight is a npapi plug-in. Did you read those links I provided before you asked that question? Flash and Silverlight will either become non-npapi plug-ins or stop working with Chrome come Sept 2015. – Ramhound May 11 '15 at 12:59
  • 4
    I should point out IE doesn't even support npapi. So your underhanded comment about Microsoft is sort of funny. – Ramhound May 11 '15 at 13:02
  • 1
    @TSJNachos117 Edge is using EdgeHTML, a fork from Trident, but the changes are so drastic that it'd be as hard to say EdgeHTML is still Trident, as it would that Edge is the still IE. – Louis Waweru May 13 '15 at 00:16
  • 1
    Apparently, this option no longer exists since version 47 – w3spi Jan 08 '16 at 22:55
  • @Zl3n Dully noted. – td512 Jan 09 '16 at 02:17
  • This only works for Chrome 42 to 44 -> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3058254 – John Slegers Feb 22 '16 at 00:46
26

Great answer above, utilizing the override option in Chrome Flags. However, this will only work until September 2015

See Chromium Blog they write as follows;

In September 2015 we will remove the override and NPAPI support will be permanently removed from Chrome. Installed extensions that require NPAPI plugins will no longer be able to load those plugins.

Aron Einhorn
  • 396
  • 2
  • 3
  • 3
    Good bye Silverlight and Flash. Welcome to the age of HTML5 – NoName Jul 27 '15 at 08:17
  • 3
    Too bad you can't selectively block (click-to-play) HTML5 elements, so welcome to the age of wasted bandwidth, memory, CPU cycles, and the land of no peace and quiet with more and more damned big, long, loud autoplaying HD videos everywhere (especially ads) and no way to prevent it. – Synetech Aug 21 '15 at 13:59
  • @Synetech I strongly doubt such tactics will return as most end users will simply not accept them as a good part of their experience. Your own reaction is proof of that. The will of the market (eventually) governs the producers. – OneHoopyFrood Sep 14 '15 at 15:11
  • @Synetech There are addons to block that, [like this one for Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/canvasblocker/). – Cees Timmerman Oct 08 '15 at 13:24
12

With Chrome 43 I find that using the enable-npapi flag no longer helps to enable NPAPI plugins.

While the flag remains in the chrome:// settings for version 43, and despite Google saying that from "Chrome version 45, you’ll need to use an alternate web browser to load content that requires a NPAPI plugin"1, it seems the move has already taken effect.

1: NPAPI plugins don't work on Chrome version 42 and higher

Louis Waweru
  • 23,945
  • 39
  • 132
  • 198
  • 2
    But are you really surprised that Google lied and did whatever the hell it wants regardless of user feedback? If not, then you clearly don’t have much experience with Google (lucky you). – Synetech Aug 21 '15 at 14:00