More Eolas Panic-mongering
I’m still seeing blogs out there posting misinformation about the Microsoft IE Eolas Patent Suit Patch. All of the misinformation is regarding exactly how the patch will affect ActiveX controls embedded on a page. People are saying that the content “will not run until the user clicks on it”. This is simply not true. Code WILL execute, and your apps will run. The only difference is that the user must click once within the bounding box of the embedded content in order to interact with it.
This sort of panic-mongering is annoying to me. It’s a problem inherent with blogs. Bloggers who rush to publish stories without fact-checking first are doing a disservice to the community.
In this case, it is obvious. Anyone who writes something like “the flash content will not run” obviously never installed the patch to see for themselves what would happen, and yet there they write a two-page article about how this thing will break the internet and how you need to go back and install a bubble-gum and band-aids javascript hack to fix your pages. Oops, now there I go… that last statement was just a troll to get comments. 
Hi,
I assume from your post that you’re refering to the article on Fusion Authority (http://www.fusionauthority.com/News/4604-The-ActiveX-Change-What-Does-This-Mean-for-You.htm) about the Eolas issues. I have to disagree with your statement above about the amount of time spent researching this. A lot of time was spent researching this but it seems that just about all of the material out there says the same thing and is incorrect.
There was nothing in the article that promoted panic. It was a straight forward article on what you will have to do. Additionally, as Flash is an interactive technology, the difference between running and interacting is a rather important one.
We will readdress the issue and appreciate the fact that you came directly to us rather than posting it to the public instead.
Comment by Michael Dinowitz — 4/4/2006 @ 10:46 am
“you need to go back and install a bubble-gum and band-aids javascript hack to fix your pages.”
What… you mean like these clowns?
They’re one of these “you can use javascript to get round this thing Eolas have inflicted on us” types, and plainly they haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about…
You gotta laugh!
Comment by Oliver — 4/4/2006 @ 10:56 am
I understand where you’re coming from, but the reality is that, to the average end user, the content is not running, regardless of what might be happening under the hood. You can split hairs regarding whether or not server calls are actually made, etc., before the user clicks in, but in the absence of a user-initiated click, the user will assume the widget is not working. I’ve already seen it happen.
By the way, your comments box auto-magically expands to the width of the width. The annoyance with that is that it expands *under* the right column (with the categories, search, archives, etc.), so you can’t see a lot of what you’re typing!!
Comment by Dave Carabetta — 4/4/2006 @ 11:21 am
Woops, that should say, “width of the window” rather than “width of the width.” I couldn’t see it though!!
Comment by Dave Carabetta — 4/4/2006 @ 11:23 am
Dave, thanks for the comment. I still think there’s a huge difference between “not running” and “not interactive”. I have a Flash slideshow player on Slideroll that makes a call to the server, loads XML, and loads several JPEGS, then displays them. This all happens without user intervention, and happens with the Eolas patch installed. So therefore, the content is running, and the actionscript is executing. Fortunately, in the case of the Flash slideshow, user intervention really isn’t necessary. There may be other cases where this is more of an issue.
Comment by geoff — 4/4/2006 @ 12:25 pm
Michael, thank you for the comment. I wasn’t talking about your site specifically. I didn’t post a link to any sites because I didn’t want to unfairly single anyone out. If I had time, I’d locate all of the sites on the world wide internet and post them, with specific notations on where inaccurate information appears. When I speak about panic-mongering, what I’m really talking about is sites who post information that is untrue or inflammatory in order to get attention to their site. I’m not saying that this is true in your case. But, I have to ask, in your research, did you install the patch and see the results for yourself?
Comment by geoff — 4/4/2006 @ 12:28 pm
I’m sorry for being so snarky. We do appreciate your information and pointing out where we (and others) are wrong. We’ve gone back and altered the article to make sure it’s accurate. While this isn’t really a ColdFusion issue (which we are focused on), it’s still something that impacts the CF community. Any news source needs to be double checked and to admit when they were inaccurate.
Actually, we’re still in the process of updating the article. As for installing the fix, we depended on others hands on work with this. We should have tried it ourselves.
Comment by Michael Dinowitz — 4/4/2006 @ 1:15 pm
Thanks Michael, I appreciate your journalistic integrity.
I guess I got a little fired up myself, because the first blog post I read on this subject on another blog was saying “this will break the internet”, and “your pages will have a blank space where the Flash should be”. I nearly wet myself. So, I was both relieved and a little peeved when I installed the patch and found out what it really does.
My next blog post on the subject will be “Alien Slugs will Infest Your Brain if you Install the Eolas Patch”.
Comment by geoff — 4/4/2006 @ 1:33 pm
I’m with you on this one. To some degree, the Eolas patch is being WAY overhyped. Some simple Javascript will fix everything, and then it’s no big deal. That said, even I made some sensational claims about the patch as it relates to Flash-based ads. I felt I was making some valid points, but it turns out that people are more willing to use Javascript than I thought. I have a feeling I fell into the “hear it enough times, and you’ll start to believe it” area.
Comment by Josh — 4/4/2006 @ 5:28 pm
“…the Eolas patch is being WAY overhyped…”
This can’t be farther from the truth. Flash was designed to be an interactive medium. By definition, if you have to do something to initiate that interactivity then it takes away from the intended use.
The claim that “just install a little JS” is so hap-hazard it isn’t even funny. We have over 8000 website pages across 50+ domains that have flash menus, flash banners, flash movies with interaction elements, that are embedded using the tag. This code has to be removed and substituted with flashobject code. Unless I am missing a really simple explanation or tutorial…this is a “by-hand-page-by-page” task.
This EOLAS issue WILL BE A BIG DEAL later this summer.
Comment by Jon — 4/14/2006 @ 11:08 am
The whole reason we have web standards is so that we don’t have to go and recode our pages because of a change in the functionality of a browser. If we code our pages to web standards, our pages should be future-proof. The only exception would be if the W3C deprecates something, like, say, the blink tag.
Somehow, though, since it is Microsoft, it doesn’t work that way. Up is down, down is up. We change our code to follow them. This is why I said, “No way!” before. It’s a slippery slope.
Comment by geoff — 4/14/2006 @ 6:41 pm
This is not Microsofts problem. It’s a problem of US patent system creating patent trolls, like Michael Doyle, the founder of Eolas.com, a company with no working product, 1 employee, 10 lawers and 100 investors. Patents were supposed to promote innovation. I wonder how users will like Eolas “innovation” when their browsers get updated.
And eventually ALL browsers will have to implement this, including Firefox and Safari, since nobody in his sane mind wants to voluntarily infringe on a patent.
Comment by sutrostyle — 4/14/2006 @ 7:45 pm
[...] Geoff giver i sin blog et udemærket overblik over præcis hvad der sker, og de kommentarer der er lavet er får de sidste brikker til at falde på plads: More Eolas Panic-mongering [...]
Pingback by Den nye IE patch - er det enden for Flash? · omFlash(); — 4/21/2006 @ 7:48 am
There’s no way to create good patented ideas nowaday’s without either one or two things happenning.
(1) someone will claim you thought of the idea while working under a contract where you have to share intellectual property.
(2) where you are simply outmanouvered by the fact that you cant defend a copyright case.
Andy
Comment by Andy — 3/30/2007 @ 4:27 am