Veerle's blog

Microsoft, which lost an initial 521 million Dollar verdict in August to Eolas and the University of California over browser technology, said that it will make “minor changes” in the way the Internet Explorer handles Web pages using ActiveX controls…

Eolas is the company that sued Microsoft for using technology that wasn't theirs to begin with. In other words the technology to view content such as Flash, QuickTime, Real etc. directly in your browser (which is kind of a simplified explanation). What will happen if we designers don't edit our code is, that when a user comes on a webpage which contains several swf's (Flash) movies, that he will have to click OK on a alert window for each Flash/swf movie that is loading. So imagine... nice user experience :-(

The solution is using a external javascript which does a "document.write", not that handy since we have to do this for every swf movie and every line of code. But what I was thinking is actually also on Jeffery Zeldman's mind. To quote what he saids

"We also will not be surprised if Eolas sues again, claiming this method, too, violates the conditions of the one-man company's lawsuit." Another issue is of course, who's going to pay for the extra work? Us or the client?

To quote Jeffery Zeldman again

"In any case, don't blame the developers, and don't blame Microsoft. All of this is because a judge who was not an internet expert made a decision with untold consequences for the health of the web."

I am planning to sit this one out and seeing how this saga continues, because I don't want to go through all this work and then hearing that Eolas objects to this method and I have to change all my code again! Yak! What a frustration and a bummer for the web! :-(

...to be continued.