Bug 25540 – Allow plug-ins to pass off content display to other plugins that handle same mime type

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: WONTFIX
• Component: Plug-ins

[Simone Manganelli]

Summary: Plug-ins register for mime types that they are able to display.  However, if there are two plug-ins that register for the same mime type, WebKit decides which of the two plug-ins gets to handle that mime type based on some unspecified order.  It would be nice if there were an official way to allow plugins to refuse to display content, forcing WebKit to pass off display of that content to the next plug-in that can handle that mime type.


Steps to Reproduce:

1.  Install two plug-ins that register for the same mime type.  (For example, Flash and ClickToFlash.)

2.  Note that once the content is loaded into one of the plug-ins, there is no way to force it to load in the other plug-in when using the same mime type.  The plug-in must change the mime type of the content in order to get it to load in a different plugin.


Expected Results: I expect for there to be a way for plug-ins to pass off content to other plug-ins which handle the same mime type.  One way to do this would be for WebKit to detect whether +plugInViewWithArguments: returns nil.  If it does, WebKit should check for another plug-in that loads the same mime type, and use *that* plug-in to display the content.


Actual Results: Only one installed plug-in can ever load content of a given mime type.

[Mark Rowe (bdash)]

<rdar://problem/6852577>

[Simone Manganelli]

Don't want to be pushy (I imagine this is pretty low priority), but any possibility of action on this bug?