Upcoming Changes to Internet Explorer 6

Preparing your site for upcoming changes to IE6

The way that Internet Explorer 6 handles active content using the object, embed, or applet tags is about to change. If your website uses any of these tags for interactive content (like a flash menu), please make necessary preparations beforehand in order to smooth the transition for your users.

What's happening?

Eolas, a software company and patent licensee which claims to have invented the first web browser that supported plug-ins (like Flash and Quicktime), has been engaged in a dispute with Microsoft for several years about the latter's infringement of the Eolas patent.

Microsoft is planning to release changes to the code in Internet Explorer 6 in order to side-step the patent. In the future, any active content on a website, such as QuickTime, Flash, Java, and other Active-X controls, will need to be manually enabled by the user before they can be used.

Why are you telling me this?

Because we care about you.

What exactly is this change you keep talking about?

It'll happen like this: A user will go to a page that has, for example, a flash menu. They will be prompted to click on the menu to activate it before they can use it. Then they will click on a button to go to another page. They will need to click on the menu again to activate it. If they go back to the original page, they will need to click on it again to activate it again. Without modification, this will obviously impair the user's experience.

These changes will only affect pages that use the object, embed, or applet tags to display interactive content.

To clarify: movies, audio, etc. will all be played without activation, but cannot be interacted with. So, for example, embedded audio will start to play, but a user cannot change the volume without first activating the control.

What can we do?

Apple has released an easy-to-follow workaround for this change involving the replacement of the affected tags with external javascript:
http://developer.apple.com/internet/ieembedprep.html

A slightly more complicated article on Microsoft's site discusses the workaround:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?
url=/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/activating_activex.asp

Note: this dispute does not currently affect other web browsers such as Safari, Firefox, Opera, and others.

When will this occur?

The change will take place for some users on April 11, and then for most users in June. More information about the release can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/912945.mspx

Where can I go for more information?

Developers can manually download the patch for testing here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912945

Please speak with your web provider if you have any questions or concerns.

Kara Szostek
GReNDeL.FLY Studio
Internet Marketing, Web Development, and Hosting
http://grendelfly.com