Chrome support - CMS 7.6 - Future of Silverlight with CMS?

[amandaw33]

When I was on a call with support last week prior to my upgrade to 7.6, the tech mentioned that it wasn't supported, but v7.6 works in Chrome.

This surprised me knowing that Chrome doesn't support silverlight as of Sept 1.  

I upgraded to 7.6 and no surprise, the console doesn't work for me, it prompts me to install silverlight (running latest version of stable Chrome in win7x64), at least the Computers screen and Jobs and tasks.  Patch Remediation center does load for me and it flys compared to IE11, so that's good info for me to have given my new dislike for scoping patch policies in 7.6.

I'm interseted to see what the Symantec plan is to move away from Silverlight (official MS end of life is 2021, so, unfortunately, it seems like they have a while to figure it out).

There's no Chrome plugin or something I'm missing that would make the console work (I understand not supported), right?  Maybe this tech was just using an outdated Chrome version that allowed NPAPI plugins?

[Alex Hedley]

You could use this plugin for Chrome to make it IE.

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/how-temporary-solve-problem-incompatibility-ie-11-smp-75-console-win881

They are slowly moving away from Silverlight and the Report Builder in certain parts of the SMP is being transitioned into to a lot of the other functions for v8

[Symantec2014]

Thanks for the update Sally

[amandaw33]

Thanks, that post is from 2014, well before Chrome started blocking Silverlight.  IE11 works well enough but I'll definitely be using Chrome for Patch stuff as it seems a lot faster.

Speaking of reports, I sure wish Reports would be rebuilt for the customers who don't know sql.  It's a mess for those of us who don't have the hours to devote to finding the right tables, etc.  There should be an easy GUI way to say "show me a report of computers that haven't reported in within 90 days.'  I'm thankful for these forums where someone usually helps me get what I need, otherwise I'd have to look for a different management product probably.

[Migration User]

Oracle has announced it will be dropping Java as well. We are using 7.5 so I'm not sure how much java is used in 7.6 or 8.

https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/entry/moving_to_a_plugin_free

http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/27/oracle-java-plug-in-death/

 

It does seem that plugin support is losing ground fast. Question is, what is Symatec doing about it?

[amandaw33]

Thanks for sharing, somehow I had missed those stories yesterday.  Very interesting.  Most of our apps have moved away from java plugins, but we have CMS and another big one we support for ~100 users.

[Migration User]

Sally,

This is Sean Waddell on the Symantec product team. In addition to the helpful comments on this thread, I can confirm that we are removing plugin dependencies from the console such as Java and Silverlight. In 8.0, there will still be a Silverlight dependency, which means we can't declare Chrome support. But, we expect to continue this work in subsequent releases. Silverlight console elements are being replaced with HTML5. So, while I can't state a specific timeframe for Chrome support, I can say this is a multi-release effort that has been in progress through 7.5, 7.6, 8.0 and will continue.

BTW, we are introducing report capability in 8.0 that will make it much easier to create custom reports without requiring SQL scripting. This will help in cases when the default reports don't cover your needs. We've had very positive reviews on the feature so far.

[amandaw33]

Hi Sean,

Thanks for replying.  This is all good info.  I look forward to the removal of Java, Silverlight, and reports getting better.