Microsoft Confirms IE Changes in Wake of Lawsuit

theodp writes "On Monday, Microsoft verified that it will be making what it calls "modest" changes to Windows and IE to meet the requirements of the jury verdict against it in the Eolas patent infringement case. Microsoft says it will finish making the changes to IE and Windows by early next year and will provide developers that use IE technology with documentation to help them modify their applications, Web pages, and browser plug-ins to work with the new plug-in scheme, which affects all Web pages that use plug-in technologies such as Adobe Reader, Apple QuickTime, Macromedia Flash, RealNetworks RealOne, all versions of Java, and Windows Media Player. A preview of the new user experience shows the user being prompted to confirm loading of each ActiveX control."

Comments

Re:..And the others?

[platypus]

But you can lose patents if you don't inforce them.

No, you're thinking about Trademarks.

Re:..And the others?

[Intosi]

See this pressrelease for more information.

Re:Bwa ha ha ha ha! *snicker* BWA HA HA HA HA!

[platypus]

This annoying feature was already present in one form in IE. If you check "don't start ActiveX controls" (or whatever this option was called), the dumb thing pops up a dialog box complaining about how you'll not see this site in it's full beauty because you don't like ActiveX.
For every page, and for every damned control embeded in this page (IIRC, it's a while since I last used IE)

I'm glad the the yes-to-active-x fraction now gets their own piece of the pie ;).

They're already working around it!

[rkent]

Ha! From that page: "If the OBJECT element used to load the control contains PARAM elements but none of the PARAM elements specify a source of data external to the current Web page, then the control does not access remote data" and so the user will not be prompted.

I suppose that this is one of the concessions they were required to make: plugin content that "specifies a source of data external to the current page" was probably convered specifically by the patent in question.

But here's the VERY NEXT sentence: "The OBJECT element for an ActiveX control has a new attribute: NOEXTERNALDATA. Specify true for this attribute to indicate that the control does not access remote data and that Internet Explorer should not prompt the user." Notice that this doesn't say "specify this tag and we'll CHECK to see if there's external data." It's basically a way to turn off the prompt, no questions asked.

In fact, the code example directly following specifies a "param url=", which sounds a helluva lot like a "source of external data" to me. Is it just me, or does this directly flout the entire point of the changes? I can't imagine that's an accident... I think MS just said "here, we'll change our default behavior, but we'll let users subvert the change starting now."

Ha!

Other interpretations?

Re:Unexpected.

[WhiteWolf666]

Eolas didn't let them.

Eolas is a 100% private company. All owned by its 1 employee.

No possibility of a hostile takeover there.

Eolas wasn't willing to sell the patent. I don't remember the article, but the Eolas guy specifically says that he wanted to use his patent to change the landscape of the broswer industry; he talks about allowing other browsers back into the market by only enforcing his patent against Microsoft (and wining a HUGE chunk of change in the process).

Not quite, read the rest:

[Watts]

The following example shows an OBJECT tag that loads a control without a prompt from Internet Explorer because the NOEXTERNALDATA attribute is set to true. The control does not receive the URL property.

In other words, the control doesn't get that URL parameter, it's just loading the component without a data source.

Re:..And the others?

[jwilcox154]

Actually, you can lose a patent, in the case of the
Victor Talking Machine Co. vs. Starr Piano Co. (1922)
the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held the Victor
patent void for lack of invention and for abandonment.

Did you catch the workaround?

[keytoe]

I haven't seen anybody mention this - but Apple has a page that describes a workaround for this for all you HTML developers out there. I checked it out, and almost spit coffee out my nose when I saw this:

Here's an example of code (a simple tag) that will not function as it did previously when loaded in the changed version of Internet Explorer for Windows:

<object classid="clsid:02BF25D5..." ...>
<param name="src" value="sample.mov">
</object>

OK - so far so good. Then they get to this part:

Create and place the external JS file on your site. In this example, call it foo.js. This script needs to document.write the full object/embed tag that was previously in your HTML file:

function InsertSampleMovie()
{
document.write('<object classid="clsid: 02BF25D5..." ...>\n');
document.write('<param name="src" value="sample.mov" />\n');
document.write('</object>\n');
}

I can see where this is going...

Replace each [object], [embed], or [applet]; tag with a call to the appropriate external files as follows:

<script language="JavaScript"type="text/javascript" >InsertSampleMovie();</script>

So- in summary: Writing the code directly in HTML is a violation and will trigger IE to spit the silly dialog box. Having JavaScript (and therefore the browser itself) write the offending code is just kosher. Wow.