Plug-in (computing) - Purpose and Examples

Purpose and Examples

Applications support plug-ins for many reasons. Some of the main reasons include:

  • to enable third-party developers to create abilities which extend an application
  • to support easily adding new features
  • to reduce the size of an application
  • to separate source code from an application because of incompatible software licenses.

Specific examples of applications and why they use plug-ins:

  • Email clients use plug-ins to decrypt and encrypt email (Pretty Good Privacy)
  • Graphics software use plug-ins to support file formats and process images (Adobe Photoshop, GIMP)
  • Media players use plug-ins to support file formats and apply filters (foobar2000, GStreamer, Quintessential, VST, Winamp, XMMS)
  • Microsoft Office uses plug-ins (better known as add-ins) to extend the abilities of its application by adding custom commands and specialized features
  • Packet sniffers use plug-ins to decode packet formats (OmniPeek)
  • Remote sensing applications use plug-ins to process data from different sensor types (Opticks)
  • Smaart, an audio spectrum analysis application which accepts plug-ins for third-party digital signal processors
  • Software development environments use plug-ins to support programming languages (Eclipse, jEdit, MonoDevelop)
  • Venue, a digital mixing console architecture developed by Digidesign and owned by Avid Technology, allows third party plug-ins
  • Web browsers use plug-ins (often implementing the NPAPI specification) to play video and presentation formats (Flash, QuickTime, Microsoft Silverlight, 3DMLW)

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