A recent update of Internet Explorer here apparently contained code that provides remediation of issues in the EOLAS patent settlement regarding activating ActiveX controls on Web pages. Don’t ask me to explain that. The important thing is all my QuickTime movies broke in IE.
Well, they didn’t exactly “break,” but when IE encountered a movie on a page, it halted page rendering and present a “Click to run an ActiveX control on this webpage” dialog that required clicking before the page would finish rendering.
The workaround is to have Javascript load the ActiveX control into the page for you. Apple provides a nice set of instructions and a script for implementing the required change.
I thought Flash objects would have the same problem, but that doesn’t quite appear to be the case. I don’t use much Flash on the site and where I have, it is usually loaded by a script already. If a fix for that is required, FlashObject is the way to go.
These methods require Javascript to be enabled in order to work, and our logs show that 10% of our users do not. However, Apple points out in the above-linked document that a user that has Javascript disabled probably also has ActiveX controls disabled so it doesn’t really matter.
The good news is that because so much of the recent material of this type is driven by a content management system, a couple of changes to cms templates were all that was required to fix many of the affected pages.
A good thing to come out of this is that it has caused me to visit pages with QuickTime movies and do some file housekeeping.
I started using javascript to place all flash and movie files back in 2004 when the lawsuit first started. What i quickly realized was that it was a much easier way to place embedded objects than cutting and pasting that large block of embed and para code each time. Here are more instructions on using javascript to get around the click to activate issue.
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