Guid attribute proposal

[Ryan Doherty]

Hi, I'm proposing adding a 'guid' property to plugins.  https://wiki.mozilla.org/NPAPI:GuidAttribute

I work on the team that manages Mozilla's plugin database and plugin checker (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/). Currently our algorithm for determining which plugins are installed in a browser is non-trivial (https://wiki.mozilla.org/PFS2#General_Algorithm). Using a guid to uniquely identify plugins would allow for a very simple REST API for all browsers to use. 

Firefox 4 will use the current plugins database api utilizing mime-type and name to determine if updates are available, having a guid property would make it much easier. The Google Chrome team has also expressed an interest in using an api that takes unique ids for plugins and returns version information.

I'm also curious if this is better handled by the NPP_GetValue function in the NPAPI spec (and how the guid could be surfaced to JS in webpages). 

Let me know your thoughts on the spec and which direction is best, thanks!

Ryan Doherty
rdoherty at mozilla.com