Java Embedding Plugin Included in Mac Mozilla Firefox and Camino

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and future releases of Camino will both include the Java Embedding Plugin, allowing Mac OS X users to run Java applets with the latest 1.4 and 5.0 versions of Java (confusingly, Java 5.0 is also known as Java 1.5). Due to a change in the way Java works on Mac OS X, the current end-user releases of Firefox and Camino cannot use any version of Java later than 1.3.1.

Apple distributes its own Java software, which it licenses from Java creator Sun Microsystems. Earlier Apple Java releases supplied an API to allow browser makers to support the technology but that API was changed in the more recent 1.4 and 5.0 versions, making it impractical for browsers other than Apple's own Safari to use the latest Java software.

Independent developer Steven Michaud created the Java Embedding Plugin to allow non-Safari browsers to exploit Java 1.4 and 5.0. The first public version of the plugin was released last year under the open-source MIT License. Its inclusion in future releases of Firefox and Camino means that Mozilla users on Mac OS X will be able to benefit from the latest Java technology without having to download or configure any additional software.

If the Java Embedding Plugin were not available, it is likely that future versions of Firefox and Camino would have to be released without support for Java at all, due to concerns over unresolved security bugs in the now-obsolete 1.3.1 version of Apple's Java software.

The Java Embedding Plugin Readme has more technical details about how the plugin works. Bug 301076 covers the inclusion of the Java Embedding Plugin in Camino, while bug 303161 covers the bundling with Firefox.

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