IE patch breaks plugins

Posted At : March 29, 2006 12:52 PM
Related Categories: Microsoft,ColdFusion

Flash, Java, QuickTime, and other plugins could fail to automatically load in Internet Explorer, if the client machine has this new patch. Microsoft is trying to defend against liability from an Eolas patent lawsuit. This lawsuit is old news, but web developers are finally seeing the repercussions. This is one of those annoying patents that should never have been granted. But it was, and Eolas is using it to attack Microsoft.

Adobe has an information page up, and they've already released a patch for Flex, and "In the coming weeks, Adobe expects to make available alternate solutions to Microsoft's script-based technique to help make it easier for developers who use active content prepare for the expected changes to Internet Explorer." This will affect ColdFusion's Flash forms and charts as well, so I hope Adobe can come up with a work around.

By the way, have you installed Firefox yet?

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You could just use FlashObject:

http://blog.deconcept.com/flashobject/
# Posted By Geoff | 3/29/06 7:07 PM
Geoff-That does look like a cool tool, but I don't think it will help with flash forms and charts created by CF. Those are dynamically created by ColdFusion, so you don't have a prebuilt flash movie to embed.
# Posted By yacoubean | 3/29/06 8:00 PM
so are you saying that Firefox won't have this problem? I can just tell people they can use firefox (or any other browser) and i'll be fine?
# Posted By Michael White | 3/30/06 8:08 AM
This is misinformation. Content from plugins with STILL automatically load. The only difference this patch makes is that it requires the user to click once on the content in order to interact with it (i.e. click buttons, enter text, etc.).
# Posted By Geoff | 3/30/06 8:39 AM
Michael-you are correct. Firefox and the other browsers doing a patch like this, as far as I know.

Geoff-my post says "plugins could fail to automatically load". I tried to make it clear that the problem is that plugins won't be dynamic anymore, that the user will have to click the screen. In a lot of cases, this means the user will just see a blank spot on the screen (until the developer fixes it of course).
# Posted By yacoubean | 3/30/06 12:24 PM
Hi,
I use flash forms on the mac using firefox, safari and camino with no issues at all, but today I had to use windows with IE, and they did not work at all. I told my school to install firefox!

Thanks for the information,
John
# Posted By John Barrett | 4/13/06 10:38 PM
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