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)