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Microsoft IE ActiveX Update
Notice: Updated April 30, 2006 usable workaround, read below
As some might remember, in 2004 Microsoft lost a lawsuit to Eolas Technologies concerning a patent for "Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document"
In short, Eolas holds the patent for how things like flash and quicktime/mediaplayer movies are added to a website - in any browser.
Notice: Read more about the lawsuit here.
Two days ago Microsoft released a preview of the ActiveX update for MSDN subscribers. This update is a workaround - or so Microsoft claim - to the patent, but it also means a very different approach to adding embedded content in Internet Explorer.
Here is how...
What does it do?
The ActiveX update makes a very simple change. It prevents you from automatically interacting with an embedded object - like a flash movie. You have to activate it first.
In general, and contrary to what many people have speculated, it only prevents interaction with embedded content. If you add a flash movie to your site, it will play, but you cannot interact with it. That includes any mouseOver effects.
Take a thing like Todd Dominey's SlideShow Pro:
When visiting a page that contains a slideshow, the slideshow will start and automatically skip to each slide. But, the caption bar does not appear when you mouse over the images, the thumbnails does not show up when you mouse over the slide numbers and you cannot stop, skip or use any of the controls by clicking on the them.
Instead you have to first click on the flash object, which activates it, then you can use the interaction controls.
The same happens for any site that relies on flash for navigation. The navigation bar just sites there inactively, until you click on it. Any fancy mouseOver effect, any button, or any slider you might have added does not work before the entire flash movie is activated.
Not to mention the countless of site that uses flash to play music. Stopping it is no longer a single click experience - Click activates + Click "pause music".
Of course, when you have clicked on object it stays activated - unless you reload to page or move to another page with the same flash object.
What about movies?
A similar thing happens to movies. Any embedded movie (Quicktime, Real or Media Player etc.) will start to play. But the buttons to control the movie - like a simple thing as the volume control is inactive.
Again, you have to activate them and then do whatever you want to do.
This is especially bad for 360 VR movies, like those you see on car sites. You can no longer just start moving around. In terms of usability everything is twice as hard, and takes twice as long.
To make it worse, pages that rely solely on things like flash, quicktime etc. might break completely. The page below is Apple iLife 2006 product tour after the update.
What about ads?
A lot of people have hoped that this would prevent all those pesky flash ads from working. Especially those who take over your screen, positioning themselves on top of the content you are trying to read.
Well, here is some bad news for you. Since the ActiveX update does not prevent playing it does not prevent any flash ad from displaying.
And, before you could simply click the close button to remove the flash add, now you have to first click the flash ad to activate it, then you can close it.
This effectively makes ads twice as annoying.
The solution
The good thing about all of this is that there is a way to solve it. The patent only concerns embedded content, not content from an external source.
Simply speaking instead of adding the applet, embed or object tag directly to the page, you add it using an external JavaScript file.
Microsoft has published a technical description of how to do this. But in terms of complexity, this is quite simply disastrous.
Notice: The activeX update does not effect applications using the WebBrowserControl (Microsoft's browser engine API)
Of course, the real solution is to change the status of embedded content. Today it is handled as external applications. But, if Microsoft, Adobe or Apple where to incorporate flash and QuickTime as internal functions of the browser we could forget about embedding and the patent altogether.
But, that might be a bit tricky...
Get ready!
My advice is to either change your site now (if you use embedded content), or to get ready to do it.
Microsoft has announced that this will be a forced update - similar to a critical security patches. This change is coming whether we like it or not.
Update - March 22, 2006: Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (March 20 release) now "features" the updated ActiveX functionality.
Update - March 28, 2006: Fulton Yancy of webbanalys.se, reports the new ActiveX behaviour after updating Windows XP SP2. Thanks Fulton!
Update - March 28, 2006: There is a a bug in the new ActiveX update. When placing a DIV above activeX content (like Flash), you cannot operate the DIV's HTML controls before activating the underlying Flash movie. Example: The sign-in box on Brinkster.com.
Update - March 30, 2006: This "forced update" will be delivered April 11, 2006. More at BetaNews
Update - April 30, 2006: Jason of ripper.rhetoric has created a usable workaround that gets around the change without having to modify existing content. Detailed information here.
Related
- IE ActiveX Update Workaround (Baekdal.com, January 2006)
- Activating ActiveX (MSDN, January 2006)
- ActivateActiveX (ripper.rhetoric, April 2006)
- Adobe's Active Content FAQ (Adobe)
- SWFObject, workaround used by many sites (DeConcept)
Comments
Anonymous - Jun. 24, 2006
There is also a form here that will fix your pages and you do it all on-line, there is nothing to download: http://www.happinessu.org
dvargas@thevargasgroup.com - Jun. 27, 2006
Hi Ted,
Thanks for the help, your fix worked just fine. I am new to flash and I was worried that I would destroy something.
David
Gero - Jul. 3, 2006
If you have a PHP enabled web-browser or generally spoken PHP based web content containing Flash or other media contents, you may want to have a look at my above mentioned homepage: I created a solution that can be applied to existing code, reformatting the Flash and other media embeddings on-the-fly.
You can stick to regular, easy to create code - and leave it to the postprocessor to deliver this as proposed by Microsoft to the client's browser. Best thing: It's dead simple to use!
Have a look at http://www.gerozahn.de/click-workaround/
Tim Ambler - Jul. 27, 2006
Here's a PHP function that automatically created the JavaScript necessary to get around this:
http://www.mediajolt.com/blog-2.php
You use it like so:
dispFlash("myfile.swf", "250", "25");
David - Aug. 10, 2006
What about the web SURFER???? How abou the surfers who dont want to click twice... I cannot stand it! I cannot rely on every website administrator to make the needed changes... how do i tell my computer/browser (IE) to make the first click for me.... OTHER THAN clicking it myself....
Draino - Nov. 11, 2006
What david said - we don't want to click twice.
Thomas Baekdal - Nov. 11, 2006
David / Draino. This is what you do to get IE to automatically activate Flash movies etc.
Contact Eolas and tell them to drop their patent. Their email address is:
info@eolas.com
Brian Thompson - Dec. 17, 2006
I was about to contact Eola and then I thought, why contact Eolas? If they did in fact have a patent on the technology that MS used, should we not be contacting MS to pay any royalt=ies that Eolas wants. If Eolas has a legitimate claim to the technology and MS stole it, MS should pay to put it back in their software. Just a thought, as I don't know all of the details.
Thomas Baekdal - Dec. 17, 2006
This case is really about 3 things:
1: About a patent for someting that was already invented (prior art)
2: A patent for something that should not be allowed to be patented
3: A patent that Eolas does not try to use (they have never made any products or technologies that we can use) - and as such they claim money for an idea that they do not use themselves or try to share. They patented an idea, then they just waited until sombody else got it, got big and sued them.
Why did they wait so long before they sued - why did they wait until Microsoft dominated the browser market. Why did they not sue them when it was used in Internet Explorer 3? Why did they not sue them in 1996?
Legally their case is thin, Morally and ethically it is disgusting by the part of Eolas (some of the blame falls of course to the patenting system itself).
Every day a million people get an idea (many times it is the same idea) - why do the law favor those who do not use it? I get an idea everyday, but I never patent it. The result is that I can get into legal trouble is I where to use it - because some idiot have decided to patent it, and sit back and wait.
I made WEB2DNA because I got that idea one saturday afternoon - but I will not be suprised if somebody have patented "presenting HTML as graphics" or something similar. Should I then pay loyalt=ies? Did they make the system? Did they put it into use? How can anyone claim to have the rights to an idea of mine? How can Eolas have the right to claim an idea to somebody else got too.
If somebody stole an idea, that should of course be punished - but Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and all other browser manufactures did not steal it. They built it because it was a natural part of the evolution of the browser.
Ivan - Dec. 22, 2006
I find that with the new IE7 all of my embedded videos do not play!
click or no click, just don't play anymore. I can only get videos to play from a standard link - embedded plays not at all..
anyone else find this to be a problem?
Does anyone have an easy solution to this problem?
Thomas Baekdal - Dec. 22, 2006
Ivan, I have never experienced problems of that kind in IE7 (and I have been using it since the very first beta).
WhiteRaven01 - Dec. 25, 2006
ok working on flash and can not get it to work with explorer
Anonymous - Dec. 30, 2006
How can I remove the program from my computer?
Anonymous - Dec. 30, 2006
It definately does not work with Internet explorer. I am at my witsend. I don't know what to do... I can't get into anything on my computer or use my address button on my internet browser. Everytime I click on the 'Go' button on my browser I get a pop up saying that "the requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context". I need it removed from my computer
Brachish - Jan. 13, 2007
Ivan, I've been having the exact same problem with IE7 for a while now. So far I've found no help for this online and, oddly, very few reports of other people experiencing this issue. I had no such problems with IE6 or any versions of Firefox, etc.... And alt=hough I'm not sure, I don't think I had the problem with the IE7 beta.... but then one day I started noticing that all embedded flash videos were missing from all pages on IE7... and the problem never corrected itself, despite having all upgrades in place, etc... odd....
I mean, I prefer Firefox anyway, but since I use some problems that specifically use IE as their base or as a component, this glitch can be very annoying.
RE:
Ivan - Dec. 22, 2006
I find that with the new IE7 all of my embedded videos do not play!
click or no click, just don't play anymore. I can only get videos to play from a standard link - embedded plays not at all..
anyone else find this to be a problem?
Does anyone have an easy solution to this problem?
Thomas Baekdal - Jan. 13, 2007
Actually, I am getting problems now too...
As far as I can figure out it is a problem with caching. I have found that instead of reloading the flash content from a JS files - you need to once only. Otherwise you can get a case of fragmented cache (where some of the content is loaded, while some is not).
The way I have solved my problems is to simply have a function that writes the content, whereever I request it.
function makeflash(file,width,height) { document.write = "
This works.
Another problem I have seen is when flash is externally embedded using virtual folders (usually for dynamic content). In some cases it simply didn't load. This was suddenly a big problem for me as every part of most of my sites have no real folders (for instance, there is no folder called "articles" on this site - it is all virtual content streaming).
BTW: My problems is, however, not limited to IE 7.
jessica - Jan. 22, 2007
i have this problem too 'the requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context' every time i try to open a new window, or click on my favorites, and enter a webiste in my address bar, its a bunch of bullsh*t and im soooo sick of it please please help me :(
mikemotorbike - Jan. 23, 2007
I've been reading up on this on gogle. One practical suggestion I have read and will try, is to remove and reinstall ie to attempt repair.
A quick emergency workaround I have discovered is to register the sought url the ie homepage(options/preferences whatever, I forget, I am in firefox now at another computer), then restart ie.
PROBLEM: "The requested lookup key was not found in any active activation context"
Joseph Schneider - Feb. 2, 2007
Same thing happening to me. IE7 won't open any quick times. It is not a problem to me, of course, since I use Firefox, but how bout the millions of people who are reluctant to throw IE out the window? They will miss out on the videos I'm embedding on my webpages.
Thomas Baekdal - Feb. 2, 2007
Joseph, The problem you report with IE and ActiveX are very rare. "millions of people" will not miss out on your videos - but only a few.
anhhan2@gmail.com - Mar. 17, 2007
Hi everybody!
I have got IE ActiveX in my website .
I can insert only one music file in value" x " by hand
I want to insert music files by onclick.
Coul you help me ?
Thank for helping !
Anonymous - Apr. 7, 2007
Hey guys, great info...if anyone is using IE5, IE6 or Opera please let me know if the site http://www.royalgemstar.com with a flash fix workaround works for you. Thanks in advance. I will place the modified code here on request.
Gene - Apr. 13, 2007
The above link (http://www.royalgemstar.com) works on IE6, please post the workaround code, much appreciated! Thanks!
Jan - Apr. 16, 2007
Have same problems with IE 7 - embedded movies don't play and flash does not work. When I tried to install flash (through the IE7 website no less) it said that flash was trying to use activex in an unsafe manner. Help!
Katalog Stron - Sep. 26, 2007
Hi every..
Thanks for the help, your fix worked just fine. I am new to flash and I was worried that I would destroy something.
Thanks
Max - Nov. 15, 2007
Has anyone found a fix for IE7 not displaying flash video? I am having the same problem and i'm really inexperienced with flash.
Published: Jan. 18, 2006 in Technology
Thomas Baekdal is a Writer, Interaction Designer, Change Advocate and Project Manager.
Ted - Jun. 10, 2006
I found a free software which helps Flash users to generate the necessary HTML code and .js file to make Flash work as it used to be, or automatically replace all old HTML code with the new code, thought it might be useful for other users too.
Information and free download page at:
http://www.a4flash.com/flash_coder.htm
Cheers,
Ted