How to install Firefox 32-bit ESR 52 without uninstalling Firefox 64-bit on 16.04

Solution 1:

Please try this workaround. For me, the plugins like Java and VLC came back after doing this. I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 64 bit with Mozilla Firefox 64 bit version 52 (not ESR) and Java JDK 1.8.0_112

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in address bar and press enter
2. Click 'I accept the risk!'
3. Right click anywhere and select New>Boolean
4. Type plugin.load_flash_only in the box that appears
5. Set the value to false
6. Clear all history and restart Firefox

I'm also using various Government websites which uses java plugin and Digital Signatures.

Try this and let me know.

Edit: Mozilla Firefox 53 will remove the flag plugin.load_flash_only so that this workaround won't work anymore.

Pale Moon web browser team announced that they will continue the support of NPAPI plugins indefinitely. To install java plugin in Pale Moon, run this in terminal

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/java/jdk1.8.0_121/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libnpjp2.so

I've tested java plugin in Pale Moon browser. 100% working.

Solution 2:

I use 16.04 LTS 64-bit
I download and unpack 64-bit Firefox (but older version - v.45) from here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/
And after that I close my 'standard' previously installed Firefox and run 'firefox' file from extracted folder of version 45 archive.
So I open my site and successfully run Java application inside it.

P.S.
I also updated Java to have the latest version:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer