As mentioned in our previous news item, Google’s Chrome web browser has recently made it a bit more difficult to activate the Silverlight web browser plug-in that Jigsaw Explorer depends on to power its jigsaw puzzles. More recently, when you load a jigsaw puzzle, the Chrome browser has started displaying a message stating Silverlight will not be supported much longer. I want to provide you with a bit more information about that issue and what is being done to address it.
Google is in the process of phasing out support for the Silverlight plug-in in the Chrome web browser. Note that no other web browser is affected, for now. Google plans to drop Chrome’s support for Silverlight completely in mid-September. We became aware of this situation early this year, and work commenced to develop a new Jigsaw Explorer puzzle player that is not based on Silverlight. The new puzzle player will be based on HTML5 technology which is supported by the latest versions of all the major web browsers, including Chrome. The HTML5 puzzle player will not require a browser plug-in (wonderful!), and will allow us to provide a jigsaw puzzle player very much like the current Silverlight player. We are working hard to have the new HTML5 puzzle player ready before the Chrome browser completely disables support for Silverlight in mid-September.
Work on the new HTML5 puzzle player has forced us to postpone development of Jigsaw Explorer mobile apps. However, the good news is that, unlike the current Silverlight puzzle player, new HTML5 puzzle player will work in mobile web browsers. So, mobile users will be able to play our jigsaw puzzles on their mobile devices before the Jigsaw Explorer apps are available.
Also, we will keep the Silverlight version of our puzzle player for people who use older web browser versions that do not support HTML5. Older browsers will automatically use the Silverlight puzzle player and newer browsers will automatically use the HTML5 player.
Hopefully, that gives you a better picture of what is going on behind the scenes as you continue to enjoy the puzzles at Jigsaw Explorer. If you have any questions or comments feel free to let us know.
