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I have discovered that navigating to a site that I control will kick off JRE (observed in Task Manager) if I browse with FireFox and if FF has the Java(TM) Platform installed as a plugin. The site does not need Java (it does use JavaScript) and if the Java Plugin is disabled on FF then the JRE is not loaded.

Does anyone know why this happens?

I do have one theory but it's a weak one: The site uses compression when sending HTML to the browser to make it faster and more responsive. I am wondering if the Java Platform has a more efficient decompressor and if Firefox sees that plugin available it uses it to run the page decompression instead of using its built in one.

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  • Since you control the site, you could test your theory by temporarily turning off compression.
    – Stephen C
    Jul 31, 2010 at 16:20
  • Does this site has some advertisements? Perhaps some of those are using Java ... Jul 31, 2010 at 16:24
  • @Stephen C - turning off compression is really difficult as it's done in code and is not an IIS config.
    – Guy
    Jul 31, 2010 at 17:08
  • @Janne - yes it has AdSense
    – Guy
    Jul 31, 2010 at 17:10
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    So, my wild guess is that those advertisements are Java-based :) Jul 31, 2010 at 19:13

1 Answer 1

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I am wondering if the Java Platform has a more efficient decompressor and if Firefox sees that plugin available it uses it to run the page decompression instead of using its built in one.

This sounds incredibly dubious. Common sense says "no".

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  • I write java and I can say that there is no way Java is faster than C/C++.
    – TheLQ
    Aug 1, 2010 at 17:59
  • What does that have to do with decompressing gzip content?
    – matt b
    Aug 18, 2010 at 14:21

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