Return fixed lists for navigator.plugins and navigator.mimeTypes

Category: DOM
Type: Chromium catches up
Status: Enabled by default (Chrome 94)
Intent stage: Prepare to ship

Summary

With the removal of Flash, there is no longer the need to return anything for navigator.plugins and navigator.mimeTypes. These APIs were used primarily for a) probing for Flash player support, or b) fingerprinting. Some sites use these APIs to probe for PDF viewer support. With this change, these arrays will return fixed lists containing a standard list of PDF viewer plugins.

Motivation

Improve interop, remove fingerprinting vector, general API cleanup.

Standards & signals

Specification: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/system-state.html#pdf-viewing-support
Firefox: Shipped/Shipping
Safari: Positive
Web developers: No signals
Tracking bug: https://crbug.com/1164635

Samples: https://output.jsbin.com/nebaruc

Explainers: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/6003 https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/6738

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