Some of you may have heard rumblings lately about a lawsuit and Microsoft and how they are being forced to change IE. Well, there is some truth to this. Microsoft was sued by a company called Eolas Technologies, Inc.[http://www.eolas.com/news.html] who holds a patent on the concept of embedding an active object or application diretly into a web page (US Patent 5,838,906, Distributed Hypermedia Method For Automatically Invoking External Application Providing Interaction And Display Of Embedded Objects Within A Hypermedia, a.k.a. 906). Microsoft holds that the patent is without merit and rather than paying a half a billion dollar jury judgement and licensing the "concept", they have decided to change the rules of how things work in HTML.
Unfortunately, since even the most optimistic statistics about alternative browser penetration into the market place show that IE maintains 85% of the market share for browsers, any changes that affect IE will greatly affect our clients.
Once this is effective, any object that is directly embedded into a web page will have to be clicked on before it can be used with any sort of interaction with the user. So, for example, see the image at left. This is from the Yes bar that is embedded into a number of our websites. The images and text embedded within the flash work when it appears on the web page, however when a user hovers their cursor over the object, a tool tip pops up stating that you must "Click to activate and use this control". The object is also highlighted while this is being hovered over.
This bodes well for MOST of our uses of this type of technology. Basically, anything that doesn't interact or react to user input will be fine. So all the flash headers on our sites that do nothing but rotate pictures will be fine. The problem arises if the object is supposed to do something when the user either selects it or hovers over it. In the image at right, this client has a logo in flash that appears to do nothing. However, once you activate the control, the logo cotnracts and expands while the mouse is over it, much like a heart would appear when it beats. This is a case where the user experience is degraded by this change in technology. At the bottom of this email, you will find a list of all the DHTML Events that will be blocked by an unactivated control.
While we rarely embed Java applets into our client's websites, they are also affected. The image at left shows a Java applet (for managing a network device) shows the same tool tip requesting a user to click on it before they can interact with it. The patent is not Operating System (OS) specific so this ruling has the potential to affect any web browser, running on any operating system. They have just pursued Microsoft 'cause they are the biggest player on the schoolground. The patent covers embedded technologies like ActiveX controls, Adobe Reader, Quicktime Player, Windows Media Player, Shockwave Player, etc. Basically, any web page that uses APPLET, EMBED or OBJECT to call a program on the user's local computer will require the user to activate it EACH TIME the page is loaded as well as for every such control on a page. Even rich media ads, like the one shown below, can be hurt by this ruling.
When is this all going to happen? Well, some people will have begun seeing this change as early as the end February when the changes to ActiveX were made. However, many users will not begin seeing this change until they update their security patches yesterday (April 11) while the remainder will have until June 13 when the change will be active to all users of IE.
Just how disruptive is this really? In my mind (having purposely setting up my system to have to live with it for a few weeks) the imposition on end users is not really too significant. From an asthetic or design standpoint, I really dislike it as it can clutter up the look of a well designed page with not only the tool tip, but also the greyish selection box around the control (very noticable in the Enter Now ad above). I've never been one to use or advocate flash "widgets" on the page that do "something" when a user rolls or hovers over it so the loss of this functionality until someone clicks on it is not that big a deal to me PERSONALLY. In fact this is one (of many) reasons why I have always encourage people to NOT use Flash as a primary navigation element.
What can we, as a company, do about it and what can we advise our clients to do? Well, Microsoft has create a loophole around the patent in this process. Effectively by not embedding the control directly on the page, but by calling it from a Javascript include so that the call comes from a file external to the web page rather than directly from the web page itself you can "beat the system." [from http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/ ]
The following code will require the control to be activated prior to reacting any DHTML event shown at bottom:
1 <!-- HTML File -->
2 <html>
3 <body>
4 <div id="embedControlLocation">
5 <object classid =
6 "clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6"
7 width="100" height="100" />
8 </div>
9 </body>
10 </html>
This code will work (the first code block is what will be in the web page, the second block shows how the called file would be called):
1 <!-- HTML File -->
2 <html>
3 <body leftmargin=0 topmargin=0 scroll=no>
4 <script src="Embed.js"></script>
5 </body>
6 </html>
1 // embed.js
2 document.write('<embed src="examplecontrol">')
Some of you smart people out there may be saying, "Hey, why not just create the call to the control using javascript embedded in the page instead of calling an external file?" Well, unfortunately the following will not get around the block built into IE.
1 <!-- HTML File -->
2 <html>
3 <body>
4 <div id="embedControlLocation">
5 <script id="elementid" src="embedControl.js"></script>
6 </div>
7 </body>
8 </html>
1 // embedControl.js
2 document.writeln('<script>');
3 document.write('document.writeln(\'');
4 document.write( '<object classid =
5 "clsid:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6"
6 width="100" height="100" />');
7 document.write('\');');
8 document.writeln('</script>');
So, bottom line, we will be working to adapt our tools so that any technology we give to our clients to use to assist them in embedding active objects or controls directly into their pages will take this into account. We will begin work immediately to identify and modify all of these types of "helpers" built into the OSA. Going forward, all sites and tools that embed active components or controls into a web page will be built using this work-around. Since ultimately it is our clients and their users who will determine what legacy content or controls will be "unacceptable", we will modify existing sites as requested via the work-order system.
Michael J. Gibbs
CTO
MediaSpan Online Services
(formerly First MediaWorks)
Appendix A: DHTML Events Blocked by Inactive Controls
The following table lists the DTHML events that are blocked when ActiveX controls are inactive.
