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Mozilla

Disabling Java In Your Browser

For the past 2 years now I’ve been browsing the web with Java disabled. I’ve had less than 5 situations where I needed to turn it on to do something, and all of those were situations with a limited audience (a very old technical tool, intranet applications). I’m of the opinion you really don’t need it enabled to happily browse the web anymore. I can’t disable Flash yet, but Java I seem to be largely fine without. I still have it on my computer in case I need it, but it’s seldom.

Given the past security issues and the fact that Java is outright annoying UI wise and slow to load, I don’t miss it at all. It served a purpose years ago in a webpage when it was difficult to build apps, but those days are long gone. It’s amazing if you remember Java being used for mouseovers way back when.

7 replies on “Disabling Java In Your Browser”

There are two things I still need Java for, unfortunately. I’d love to remove it.

One is the Total Validator add on. If there is something that works as well (validates HTML and CSS locally, thus quickly; optionally does spell checking; operates on a single page or recursively through a site).

The other, needed only for my work laptop, is WebEx conferencing.

I do need it for one or two things – however, I keep the plugin disabled except when I actually need it.

I love Neil’s idea of a whitelist, and like Simon I have it disabled except for the very rare occasion I need it. One interesting example is the common college online-class software called Blackboard, which “required” Java, but still works fine without it. I’m in my second semester with Java disabled and nary a problem yet. In fact, I find it makes things EASIER as your browser doesn’t have load lag while Blackboard loads useless applets.

I’m familiar with Blackboard from several years ago. That’s when I first tried disabling it. IIRC worked fine.

As far as a blacklist, I’d like that if it were generic for plugins. So I can use it like I use flashblock now.

Same here, it’s been more than a year that I have Java disabled and I’ve started doing the same with Flash. It’s been a few months and the only problems I’ve encountered are videos on sites other than youtube (that supports webm) and audio/radio.

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