My Experience with “The Patch”
I just installed the IE Eolas Patch (KB912945) and I must say I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there about exactly what this patch will do. I’ve read in places that it will block your content, and prevent it from displaying. This isn’t true, at least in my experience.
After installing the patch and restarting my ugly ol’ PC, I launched up my site to make sure things still worked. The Flash slideshows still play automatically. The only difference in user experience is the fact that when a user places their mouse over the ActiveX area, they see a highlighted bounding box and a tooltip that reads “Click to activate this control.”
So, it seems that Flash content will still display, and Actionscript will still execute without user intervention. As far as I can tell, and correct me if I’m missing something, but this will not “break the web”, as some have said. It will just make life more annoying for Windows users. But hey, they’re Windows users, they’re used to it.
This makes me ask myself why Microsoft, with their uber-cash, doesn’t just settle this dispute? I guess Microsoft would rather sacrifice good user experience and save their money.
NOTE: Some have been asking how to obtain this patch. To get the patch, launch Windows Update, click “Custom Install”, choose “Optional Updates”, and then check the checkbox next to KB912945.
Yea, sometimes I too wonder about why MS hasn’t settled. It is one thing for RIM (Blackberries) to not settle with NTN since it would have cost a sizeable amount of their income to do so. However, MS doesn’t have a good reason. They should have offered a few hundred million and likewise, Eolas shouldn’t have been so greedy and either refused to settle or refused to settle for ‘a few hundred million’.
This is similar to the Beta/VHS fight of the 80s, the CDR +/-/Rom/Ram problems of the 90s, the DVD +/- etc. problem of the 2000s…and sadly, the big fight between HD DVD & Blu Ray technologies in 2006+. Oh why can’t these companies just get along?!?! I know from my own hassles and experience that my adoption of a CD (and now DVD) burners & players (stand alone for TV & for computer) was drastically reduced because of fears of compatibility problems. There is no way in hell I’m buying a $500+ Blu Ray/HD DVD until the wars are over, the standards are settled, and my investment works for all media.
Comment by Ryan — 3/5/2006 @ 2:37 am
I guess they are getting ready to make sure that Sparkle will be run normally but any flash content, well you will have problems.
Comment by Mark Drew — 3/5/2006 @ 4:49 am
Hi,
I think Microsoft wont just pay because they don’t think they should – it’s like negotiating with terrorists – the more you do it the more you get terrorised.
I heard that Microsoft is ‘doing away’ with ActiveX over the coming IE versions so if that is true then this will no longer be a problem at all one day.
I haven’t installed the patch – I don’t have SP2 (many bad experiences with service packs). But from what you said about movies and scripts running without user intervention what exactly is the ‘click to activate’ for? Is it merely an evolution of the click to focus that prevents flash from intercepting any commands?
Comment by Jon B — 3/5/2006 @ 6:00 am
I experienced the same. We’ve been experimenting with IE7 beta.
Comment by John Giotta — 3/5/2006 @ 10:30 am
I think the “Click to Activate” is a way around the patent. Most likely, the patent states “automatically embedding interactive content” or something to that effect. By forcing the user to click for interactivity, they are no longer automatically embedding interactive content. They are embedding content the user must activate to interact with.
I was playing with it last night. I was trying to use Javascript to focus the ActiveX control. It worked, in that it forced the ActiveX to focus, but the same thing happens, except it then says “Press ENTER or SPACE to activate this control”. I wish I could have Javascript enter the SPACE or ENTER, then I’d effectively have a workaround for it. I even tried entering the space as if the ActiveX were a form, but no dice.
Why can’t Microsoft offer us an additional Javascript method to activate the ActiveX upon focus? That’d be convenient.
Comment by geoff — 3/6/2006 @ 10:28 am
Hello.
I just had to say that this patch is indeed not the end of the world, but it is quite annoying. I mean, I’m currently working on a webpage with a lot of flash content, and for people like me (who’s still learning how things like html and css works) this is sort of a problem. Now there’s bounding boxes all over the website and I have no idea how I get rid of them, and I can honestly say it doesn’t look very good at all.
Comment by Hittebarnet — 4/13/2006 @ 5:25 am
The best way to stop spam would be to spend some time in moderating the comments persoanlly rather than relying on any captchas. You can go to the other extreme of not allowing anyone to comment – but then the whole essence of sharing information is lost. At least Yahoo and MSN rewards the commentators with relevant backlinks, so that is a reward which many spammers like to go for.
Comment by Tom in Cala Dor Palma de Mallorca — 10/1/2006 @ 8:19 am