Browser plugin
--------------

The IcedTea browser plugin (NPPlugin) is now made immediately
available to supporting browsers without the need for eselect. Note
that Chromium-based browsers no longer support NPAPI-based plugins
since the code was removed in September 2015. The list of supporting
browsers is shrinking but still includes Firefox as of version 46.

JVM selection
-------------

By default, IcedTea's browser plugin and Web Start uses the JVM
selected via eselect or the GENTOO_VM environment variable. Note that
this doesn't have to be an IcedTea JVM. An Oracle JVM will also
work. The choice can be overridden using the itweb-settings
program. Simply blank out the field to restore the default behaviour.

Coexistence with Oracle's plugin
--------------------------------

The IcedTea browser plugin can no longer be installed alongside
Oracle's plugin. This used to be possible thanks to eselect
java-nsplugin but this was removed in an effort to simplify things. No
one is likely to need both, especially with plugins being all but
outlawed these days. To avoid any blockers, simply enable the nsplugin
USE flag on icedtea-web or the Oracle packages, but not both.

If you're wondering why we don't just leave plugin selection to the
browser, it's because Firefox (and probably others) only allows you to
disable all the Java plugins together, not individually.

Coexistence with Oracle's Web Start
-----------------------------------

/usr/bin/javaws, the executable used to launch JNLP files from a
browser, will always use IcedTea's implementation over Oracle's when
icedtea-web is installed, regardless of which JVM has been
selected. This is primarily for consistency with the browser
plugin. If you want to use Oracle's implementation then simply
uninstall icedtea-web.

32-bit plugin on 64-bit systems
-------------------------------

This is no longer supported as the 64-bit plugin can launch a 32-bit
JVM. Other reasons for running a 32-bit browser on a 64-bit system
have long passed.

32-bit JVM on 64-bit systems
----------------------------

The emul-linux-x86-java package was removed in 2015 with the migration
to full multilib. icedtea-bin now provides this feature via the
multilib USE flag. Once installed, using the 32-bit variant is simply
a case of selecting that VM as described above.