Depends on where you are in the world. Java is required for online banking in Norway, while it's mostly unused in Sweden, the neighbouring country. Both use Java for online verification to government sites.
They will. It was announced earlier this year that the Norwegian banks will move over to a HTML5/js authentication. The government identification has been the same as the banks, so that too will disappear.
Governments and banks. They are not exactly known for hiring the best and implementing best practices, regardless of what you think of Java on the client side.
Seeing browser-developers ignore the real world and just go ahead with their agendas unconcerned about how it affects the actual users of their browser is also a sign of bad development.
Banks in some countries having their heads in the sand for 15 years is not a reason to continue endangering the global economy. It's time for Norway to pull itself out of the dark ages.
You have to stop and think for a moment, though - it's kind of cool that the Firefox development team can basically say "Norwegian authorities - you need to ditch your $100 million outdated software solution because it is unsafe, and we are going to announce this to all your users".
As a Norwegian taxpayer, I disagree :-) I don't know a single Norwegian who actually enjoys having to update Java again (and anyone who's turned on the news in the last 3 years here has heard of Java security holes).
(And if this really is just a click-to-play type inconvenience, well, that's a hell of a lot less than the hoops that users are used to going through in order to get into their BankID banks here.)
> Both use Java for online verification to government sites.
Do they? I thought Sweden used the online bank identity system for verification (bankid), which is either a standalone downloadable application, a smartcard image, or an mobile app. Not sure how an Firefox policy would effect this even if some parts of the bankid uses Java.
