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MS Gives 60-Day Deadline to Web Devs
capt turnpike writes "Since losing the patent case filed by Eolas, Microsoft has to change radically the way IE works with a lot of content, especially video and other ActiveX controls. eWEEK is reporting that Microsoft has gotten a one-time, 60-day extension in which developers and companies can try to re-engineer their Web pages and ads to work with the new regime. If devs don't make that deadline, users could face pages asking them to activate much of the content, plus ads."
You mean ActiveX websites will break? . . . And that's a *bad* thing?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
There are other technologies that can plug the hole. For some applications, an Ajax page could provide the same level of interactivity as ActiveX. For stuff like Flash, they can have a plugin architecture more line Firefox's.
Bottom line is Microsoft will use this to "encourage" websites to move away from ActiveX and toward their next annoying proprietary technology.
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Each page a user visits will require them to click a button to activate the underlying ActiveX control. Wow. BFD. And that is just for those websites that haven't updated their content by June. Chaotic? Far from it.
Just goes to show Microsoft shouldn't copy other people's designs and make their own to prevent this kind of problem.
Tim Berners-Lee wrote the USPTO calling for this patent to be overturned due to prior art. A broad embedded content patent in 1998? Pu-lease. It's as bogus as a $3 bill.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Frankly after reading the article I havent got a clue where they came up with the ads part.
However, the gist I got from it is any embeded auto playing content ( heres their example list: Adobe's Reader and Flash, Apple's QuickTime Player, Microsoft's Windows Media Player, RealNetworks' RealPlayer and Sun's JVM ) will require activation before playing.
So for example, if you go to a page that has a stock ticker applet in it, instead of it automatically scrolling the current stock market stats, you will have to click it to start. However, if this is true, it would pretty much make Flash useless, as flash based GUIs would become irritating, flash based start pages wouldnt work right, etc...
Lastly, what I dont understand beyond the above question is... why arent Firefox, Opera, Safari etc... also affected?
No matter what you think of Microsoft, in the end, this is bad for the end user and the web in general. Insert misc active X jokes in your replys all you want, you would be suprised how much of the daily web actually depends on this stuff.
The sweet irony of it al
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Users will be forced to click once before punching the monkey.
If ActiveX is screwed to the point that some heavy engineering is needed to get the websites back into normal operation, some developers might start moving towards open standards that the non-IE browsers support pretty well.
For all those .\ users who say "ActiveX good riddance" - yes, EXCEPT that QuickTime, Flash, and all the other IE plugins are guess way - ActiveX plugins.
So that means every page with any usage of plugins will be broken.
Software patents AT ALL is a problem. I don't care if it was the first person who patented something like this suing, it's just not good for the end user. Suppose MS patented browser extensions, and then sued Firefox or Opera devs... And they probably will start doing stuff like this in light of this decision. I'm no MS fan, but I was on their side for this case. No good can come of this.
Lastly, what I dont understand beyond the above question is... why arent Firefox, Opera, Safari etc... also affected?
Because the guy who owns the patent has stated that he is only going to sue microsoft.
As of 2003 (when Eolas won judgement against M$), Mozilla hadn't attempted to reach any agreement. Their post on the subject says to simply keep an eye out and be ready to change if we have to change.
Wikipedia currently is still saying "Other browsers such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari might have to implement a similar change to avoid infringement, or to license Eolas' patent".
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-- Joe
I thought one of microsoft's main anti-linux FUD points was that if you use M$ technologies that you'll be protected against patent troubles like this...
wtf happened?
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Ewwwwww, coconut...
Where I'm seeing the biggest potential problem is here: Say a company hired somebody a few years ago to make them a brochure style website, and it had a flash intro, banner, etc. The company is used to seeing their website a certain way. When all of the sudden the website starts making them click 'OK' every time they go to their homepage they're going to get pissed off. They also aren't going to know why it's happening, or care, or switch browsers, or bitch about Eolas being a bullshit company, they are just going to call the person who made the site and have them fix it. I think there are going to be a lot of cases like this. Sure big companies are going to see this coming and change their code, and yes nerds will just use FireFox... but many small non-tech-savvy people with websites are going to be hit by this.
nothing
Apple has a helpful page detailing what to do in order to get your pages to continue working as usual with IE.
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The eWeek article doesn't do a very good job of highlighting that.
Before everybody says "good riddance," note that the upcoming IE update will simply mean you have to click first to enable interaction with the embedded object. This means that things like Flash ads and streaming video will still run automatically -- a user would need to click on them to be able to interact with them, i.e. find the tiny little "mute" or "close" button to make them go away. This page previews the update and shows exactly how it will change things.
ah yes, money. there is nothing to be gained from filing suit against mozilla. of course that's why my school district gets sued, but the teachers themselves rarely do.
this highlights a real problem with our IP laws and patents. while patents are good for things, for ideas they are horrible.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
There is an optional update at Windows Update that says something to the effect of "This update changes the way Internet Explorer handles ActiveX ... blah blah blah".
I figure they'll move it from optional to required when the deadline is reached.
I've already installed the update so I can get my sites ready.
ActiveX controls cause a little dialog box to appear that makes you hit either "Ok" or "Yes" in order to use an ActiveX control. Honestly this is fairly rare occurance when browsing most sites.
The big thing that is going to trip people up are flash movies. All flash movies now have a border around them when you mouse over them with a tooltip that says "click to activate and use this control".
The good news is that non-interactive flash movies work regardless of whether or not you activate the controls. Not sure why that is, but that has been my expeience. The bad news is that flash menus (unfortunately some clients want that junk) no longer work until you click on the flash movie to activate the control. This also goes for interactive flash movies that track mouse movement and whatnot.
The workaround is to write the flash movie using javascript.
you can do something simple like document.write() each line of the object tag or use something like UFO (http://osflash.org/ufo) that is XHTML compliant.
While I'm link-whoring, here's some more stuff if you want insight on the guy: Doyle's homepage, another eWeek interview "Browser Victory Shouldn't Alter HTML", and an article from I, Cringely that was one of the first media pieces on the whole issue. More can be found on Google and Wikipedia, of course.
Regardless of Doyle's intentions, I'm against the whole software and business-method patenting regimes. It's been said many times before, but patenting software or business-methods is as ludicrous as patenting story ideas in literature.
Maybe your senior devs and management might want to take a look at GPL code now. This and many other reasons make it attractive, no vendor lock in (don't you think bill gates and MS are rich enough now?), helps to avoid future patent disputes, etc. It's as good as time as any,and you have 60 days, besides the one demo. Avoid future FUBARs like this, or at least minimise the chances. MS has a clear track record of shady deals and monopolistic abusive tendencies. It is their *business model*. Why be associated with people like that? And something to throw at senior management-where is the fat check from MS to pay for all the stuff you have to change because they were thieves and lost in court and people got sucked into using their stolen code? Aren't they the straight suits dream business? Where's this idemnification action?
The old saying fits, "sleep with the dogs, wake up with fleas"
How is having javascript that runs clientside to fiddle with the DOM more maintainable than static HTML?
Microsoft routinely and regularly pulls the rug out from under developers and end-users alike. What amazes me is that people continue to choose Microsoft, no matter how many times they get burned.
Say the parent undertakes a massive switch to the
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