Microsoft removes support for Flash from IE?
March 4, 2006 | Links
Wow - just found out that Microsoft are going to be changing the way Macrodobe Flash is supported in Internet Explorer. The first quote I read said that Flash wouldn’t be supported at all, which concerned me a little since at work we base pretty much our entire business around embedded Flash (and Shockwave) content. Reading up on it it’s not quite so bad as it appeared, but it’s still not ideal.
Microsoft is expected to release updates to Internet Explorer that will change how it handles some active content such as that viewed in Adobe’s Macromedia Flash Player, Authorware Player, Shockwave Player, and Adobe Reader, as well as Sun Java, Apple QuickTime, Real Networks Real Player and other ActiveX controls.
Microsoft has stated that when viewing an affected website using the updated Internet Explorer browser, visitors will be able to see, but not interact with, the content. When a user mouses over the content, a tool tip will appear telling the user to click to activate the content. After the visitor clicks the content, the content can receive user input and behave normally.
You can read more on the Macrodobe devnet.
Related Link: Microsoft Patents Patent Genius provides complete listings for all patents held by the Microsoft Corporation including full patent text, patent drawings and patent info
Rocket Boards
Seths Puzzle Boxes
Bubble Bomb
ExGen
Comments »
March 4, 2006
Hmm…why did they see a need for this change? Apart from ActiveX, the others were fine the way they were. I assume this might be for security reasons?
March 4, 2006
They done this because of some sort of legal thing. Someone or other took them to court for using dynamic content in a certain way, so they had to change their technologies.
I’m not entirely sure about the whole reasoning behind it all, and a quick Google has thrown up nothing that explains the problem, but I’m pretty sure that they aren’t doing this to mess wth Macrodobe or any of the other plugin developers.
March 4, 2006
Oh okay, interesting. I didn’t realise there was legal implications. Thanks for shedding some light on it. I guess more will be revealed at some point.
March 21, 2006
Don’t really see the problem.. other browsers need to install flash etc anyway
April 22, 2006
CNET News.com
March 30, 2006, 10:15 BST
Microsoft plans to release a special “compatibility patch” that will temporarily undo some upcoming changes to Internet Explorer.
The patch will accompany the next security update for IE, scheduled for release on 11 April, Microsoft said on Wednesday. It reverses changes the update makes to how the Web browser handles ActiveX controls. These ActiveX tweaks can impact how certain sites display in the browser, the company said.
The ActiveX modifications are designed to shield Microsoft from liability in a high-profile patent dispute with Eolas Technologies and the University of California.
The patch should give Web developers more time to make adjustments that take the IE changes into account. The software maker has recommended that programmers tweak their pages to accommodate the ActiveX change, or else their viewers will have to click an extra time to get to some content, such as Macromedia Flash animations.
Microsoft had said it didn’t expect the IE modifications to have much impact on customer experience or partner applications. Yet on Wednesday, the software giant acknowledged that some Web developers are not yet ready to deal with them.
“We did get feedback from some [software] partners and from some enterprise customers that they need a little more time to test and update their applications,” Mike Nash, the executive who heads Microsoft’s security business, wrote in a posting to a corporate blog.
The compatibility patch is specifically designed for businesses that may have home-grown applications that use ActiveX, a company representative said. It will function until June, when Microsoft plans to release another IE security update that makes the changes permanent, the representative added.
Microsoft has already given developers some time to prepare for the changes. The company announced the tweaks in December, and a month later made them available on MSDN, its closed online network for developers. In late February, the modified software was made available to the general public as an optional download.
The ActiveX changes are scheduled for delivery on Microsoft’s regular patch day on April 11. It may ship sooner if Microsoft rushes other fixes out for a serious security flaw in the browser that is being exploited to attack users of IE 5 and IE 6.
Microsoft expects a second trial in the Eolas case to start sometime this year. A federal appeals court last March partially reversed a lower-court decision that exposed the company to more than $500m in damages.
April 22, 2006
We had an enjoyable week at work this week making sure all of our games worked with this new Eolas patch. It’s all (largely) sorted now.
April 25, 2006
the “fix” for this issue is really very simple (and actually simpler than the examples that microsoft and adobe give out) … i have had a “fix” in place since before this entire legal battle started, since i always hated putting all the embed code into my html pages for each piece of flash … here is a simple work around that can be implemented in minutes and also makes it easier to server all your flash and activex items: http://www.happinessu.org
April 25, 2006
We actually went with the code from Macrodobe
It is nice and generic so works with pretty much everything. The reason it took us so long to fix things is that we have over 300 games to fix. We automated most of it but there were a few that had unique settings that needed sorting and those took the time.
April 26, 2006
luckly we did not have to change anything since we already have been using javascript for all of our flash since early in 2004 … we did have a dev site for a new client that we had to change but that took a few minutes.