The IE Changes Explained (FREE) Support

This free article is a must-read for all web designers who use any kind of active content (Flash, QuickTime etc) on their sites. Bruce Lawson investigates the changes that you'll need to make as suggested by Microsoft, Macromedia, Real Networks and Apple if you plan to continue delivering seamless Flash or other plug-in content to the 90% of the world who use IE.

Note March 5th 2004: Good news indeed. The proposed changes to Internet Explorer to force the dialog of doom every time rich content is required have been indefinitely shelved by Microsoft.

Update 9 March: The US Patent Office has revoked Eolas' patent, but Eolas is appealing.

Bad For You:

Because your client isn't going to be delighted at paying you to make the site amends, even though it's not your fault, or else you're gonna be run ragged making all these amends for free if you made sites for non-profit organisations when you started out. Plus, it's not exactly what you want to be doing, is it?

The DMXzone patent

Oh, one last thing - I have applied for a patent on "drinking a caffeinated drink (including, but not limited to, coffee, tea, cola) whilst reading from a screen or monitor (whether LCD or CRT) that is connected to an electronic computational device". You! - are you drinking coffee while reading this? That's half a billion bucks you owe me, sucker.

    Resources:
    Microsoft detailed description: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/activexchanges.asp
    Beta of new IE to test your web pages: http://msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/ (scroll down)
    Macromedia information: http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/activecontent/ 
    The Eolator: http://www.quasimondo.com/archives/000314.php
    Accessify's HTML to JavaScript Converter http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/html-to-javascript-converter.asp
    Micheal Doyle of Eolas' email address mddoyle@EOLAS.COM (should you wish to congratulate him on his half billion dollar win and causing this mess)