What is "npapi"

Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is an application programming interface (API) that allows plug-ins (more specifically, browser extensions) to be developed for web browsers. It was first developed for Netscape browsers, starting in 1995 with Netscape Navigator 2.0, but was subsequently adopted by other browsers.

In NPAPI architecture, a plugin declares content types (e.g. "audio/mp3") it can handle. When the browser encounters a content type it cannot handle natively, it loads the appropriate plugin, sets aside space within the browser context for the plugin to render and then streams data to it. The plugin is responsible for rendering the data. The plugin runs in-place within the page, as opposed to older browsers that had to launch an external application to handle unknown content types.

NPAPI requires each plugin to implement and expose approximately 15 functions for initializing, creating, deleting and positioning plugin content. NPAPI also supports scripting, printing, full-screen plugins, windowless plugins and content streaming.