"Hey! Who Screwed Up the Internet?"
On April 11th, 2006 Due to the Loss of the Eolas Embedded External Object Patent Lawsuit Microsoft is Forced to Update Internet Explorer and by Default Disable Your Audio Players, Video Players, Flash Banners, Java Applets, and Flash Menus Unless You Have What We are Affectionately Calling "The Fix."
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Quoted Directly From Microsoft:
"After you install this update, you cannot interact with ActiveX controls from certain Web pages until these controls are enabled. To enable an ActiveX control, you must manually click the control."
"As part of this Internet Explorer update, Microsoft will release updates to the current versions of Windows XP and of Windows Server 2003. All client operating systems will be updated." |
From the desks of Josh Anderson and Greg Bendickson
Below is a brief question and answer followed by a video showing you some of the impact that the Internet Explorer Active x update will have:
Q. What does this mean to the average website visitor?
A. Multimedia player controls for video and audio, flash menu navigation, flash banners, dhtml, java applet menus, etc. will no longer work automatically on first click. They must first be enabled by the website visitor.
In other words the internet just became a little bit more complicated less responsive to the click of the average user.
Q. What does this mean to website owners?
A. If you are not using embedded objects it probably will not mean much to you at all. However, if you are using audio or video on your website, if you use or display flash banner advertising, if your site has fancy flash menus, introduction, or is made entirely of flash, it just got twice as difficult to use for your visitors.
Web visitors must first enable every embedded object before they access it. Also it means if you use any sort of auto play audio, video, or flash based pop up they will be twice as difficult to stop or close because they first must be enabled by the user before they can use the controls.
Q. What does this mean to software developers, web designers, flash banner advertising networks, and multimedia content providers that use embedded objects?
A. Some are just not taking this change seriously at all. That is a big mistake but, to be completely honest, I don't mind. I have already updated my Total Web Audio software so that the web audio player interfaces will not be disabled by the Internet Explorer update and my users who use our update will notice no effect at all. I will gladly accept the new business from my competitor's unsatisfied clients.
However, for other large firms such as flash banner advertising networks, flash development firms, and embedded media syndication services it means big trouble if they do not update their systems.
To show you how confident I am in with "The Fix" that you will get just for reading this page I just updated the main page of Total Web Audio which was running one of the older versions of my audio toolbar player that still used the <object> tag.
I ran the <object> code through the online version of "The Fix" and my audio presentation still works great and is now completely immunized against the IE active x update and will never be disabled by it. Best of all it only took me 30 seconds to do.
Just imagine what will happen when flash banner advertisements are disabled and un-clickable until they are enabled... as revenues and traffic from flash banner advertising decline the major corporations using that form of advertising will begin to look at other options.
While I was researching this problem I discovered that most of the largest flash banner advertising networks have not updated their systems and have ignored two years of warnings that this update was coming.
Q. What does this mean if I already own web video and audio software that only outputs players embedded using the <object> tag method?
A. Well if you are a Total Web Audio or FLV Producer user you won't have to worry about that because Both products released updates today that have the fix built into the code. For older audio or video presentations or those created with software from other companies who do not supply an update the answer is simple... use "The Fix" software at this site and it will fix your <object> code for you.
Q. So why have so many companies waited so long and not taken any action to update their software, websites, and advertising systems.
A. I do not know. But my guess is that when the original Eolas Patent lawsuit decision was announced against Microsoft in favor of the small California Tech development firm in 2003 that most people expected the appeals process to give them a time buffer.
Most people probably expected Microsoft would either win the appeals process or settle with the company in a way that would not have a dramatic effect on the way we interact with the internet.
The appeals process did draw out. Unfortunately despite the support of the World Wide Web Consortium who claim the Eolas patent is invalid all appeals failed and Microsoft now must take action to reverse the infringement that has been found via the use of automatically interactive embedded objects in its Internet Explorer Browser.
An automatic update is scheduled for all Internet Explorer 6 service pack 2 users which will begin going out on April 11th, 2006 and which will disable embedded objects by default.
Here are a couple video shots that I did showing the effect this update will have on various embedded objects, flash websites, and website multimedia devices:
Ok so are you falling asleep yet? Well maybe this will wake you up...
When there is a problem there is a solution and the great thing about "The Fix" is it actually makes some things work better. Now we could charge for this solution but we decided to do something better.
We decided to give it away for free...
Introducing "The Fix"
Sincerely,
Josh Anderson
www.TotalWebAudio.com
www.TotalWebVideo.com
www.Nanacast.com