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MS Gives 60-Day Deadline to Web Devs

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Mar 29, 2006 04:27 PM
from the annoyances-and-other-wastes-of-time dept.
Microsoft Internet Explorer The Internet
capt turnpike writes "Since losing the patent case filed by Eolas, Microsoft has to change radically the way IE works with a lot of content, especially video and other ActiveX controls. eWEEK is reporting that Microsoft has gotten a one-time, 60-day extension in which developers and companies can try to re-engineer their Web pages and ads to work with the new regime. If devs don't make that deadline, users could face pages asking them to activate much of the content, plus ads."
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MS Gives 60-Day Deadline to Web Devs 25 Comments More /

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  • Good Riddance (Score:5, Funny)

    by OverlordQ (264228) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:30PM (#15020423) Journal
    You mean ActiveX websites will break? . . . And that's a *bad* thing?

    • Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tackhead (54550) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:39PM (#15020518)
      > You mean ActiveX websites will break? . . . And that's a *bad* thing?

      They're going to fucking bury that technology. They have done it before, and they will do it again. They're going to fucking kill ActiveX.

      Microsoft has gotten a one-time, 60-day extension in which developers and companies can try to re-engineer their Web pages and ads to work with the new regime. If devs don't make that deadline, users could face pages asking them to activate much of the content, plus ads.

      And someone, somewhere, will get an ActiveChair flung at them.

      • Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sydb (176695) <michael@dubyadeetwentyone.co.uk> on Wednesday March 29 2006, @05:40PM (#15021027)
        Don't get so personal about your work. If the timescales can't be met because of external factors, tell your management. If you need more people on board because of external factors, tell your management. If goalposts need to be moved because of blah blah, blah blah. This is not your problem!

  • A good reason to dump ActiveX (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jimmyhat3939 (931746) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:33PM (#15020453) Homepage
    My guess is that Microsoft actually doesn't mind this one bit. ActiveX was a mistake from the get-go, with its permissions-based scheme which is dramatically more hackable than Java's sandbox-based scheme.

    There are other technologies that can plug the hole. For some applications, an Ajax page could provide the same level of interactivity as ActiveX. For stuff like Flash, they can have a plugin architecture more line Firefox's.

    Bottom line is Microsoft will use this to "encourage" websites to move away from ActiveX and toward their next annoying proprietary technology.

  • One-Click Activation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gregarican (694358) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:35PM (#15020471) Homepage
    From TFA: However, sources tell eWEEK that the situation could be chaotic when the IE patch ships as an automatic update to users of IE 6 on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003.

    Each page a user visits will require them to click a button to activate the underlying ActiveX control. Wow. BFD. And that is just for those websites that haven't updated their content by June. Chaotic? Far from it.

  • Click here to activate Advertising (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alien54 (180860) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:39PM (#15020510) Journal
    The sweet irony of it al

  • This will be a disaster! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:39PM (#15020513)
    Users will be forced to click once before punching the monkey.

  • Not just ActiveX... (Score:5, Informative)

    by akac (571059) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:42PM (#15020541) Homepage
    For all those .\ users who say "ActiveX good riddance" - yes, EXCEPT that QuickTime, Flash, and all the other IE plugins are guess way - ActiveX plugins.

    So that means every page with any usage of plugins will be broken.

    • Re:Not just ActiveX... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gstoddart (321705) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:59PM (#15020680) Homepage
      For all those .\ users who say "ActiveX good riddance" - yes, EXCEPT that QuickTime, Flash, and all the other IE plugins are guess way - ActiveX plugins.

      Wait, we can get rid of ActiveX, Flash and quicktime all in one shot?

      So, umm, what's the downside again?

      • Re:Not just ActiveX... (Score:5, Informative)

        by acroyear (5882) <jws-slashdot@aboutjws.info> on Wednesday March 29 2006, @05:04PM (#15020719) Homepage Journal
        the "Netscape-style" plug-ins would still be vulnerable; Mozilla is still vulnerable, as is Safari (and its Konquerer codebase).

        the patent isn't on the specifics of Active-X, but the absolute general vague as hell concept of the browser plug-in. According to Cringley (years ago), Eolas showed a version in the opensource Mosaic codebase to Sun and Netscape *before* java was included in Netscape 2.0. Java is vulnerable.

      • Re:Not just ActiveX... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mejesster (813444) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @05:23PM (#15020886)
        Are you literate? This isn't killing IE, this is a suit based on IP about plugins. Any browser that has plugins would be vulnerable to future suits, including your precious firefox and opera and konqueror and seamonkey or whatever else. It has nothing to do with standards compliance or the quality of that steaming piece of shit browser. And how are their "shady business practices" in any way related? This isn't about monopolies, or media/browser integration, it's a patent case against a specific browser. It's comments like yours that make slashdot so painful to read.

  • Microsoft Umbrella? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MyDixieWrecked (548719) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:48PM (#15020582) Homepage Journal
    I thought one of microsoft's main anti-linux FUD points was that if you use M$ technologies that you'll be protected against patent troubles like this...

    wtf happened?

  • Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by szembek (948327) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:52PM (#15020621) Homepage
    Where I'm seeing the biggest potential problem is here: Say a company hired somebody a few years ago to make them a brochure style website, and it had a flash intro, banner, etc. The company is used to seeing their website a certain way. When all of the sudden the website starts making them click 'OK' every time they go to their homepage they're going to get pissed off. They also aren't going to know why it's happening, or care, or switch browsers, or bitch about Eolas being a bullshit company, they are just going to call the person who made the site and have them fix it. I think there are going to be a lot of cases like this. Sure big companies are going to see this coming and change their code, and yes nerds will just use FireFox... but many small non-tech-savvy people with websites are going to be hit by this.

  • How to update your pages (Score:5, Informative)

    by raju1kabir (251972) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @05:00PM (#15020683) Homepage

    Apple has a helpful page [apple.com] detailing what to do in order to get your pages to continue working as usual with IE.

  • Won't disable "non-interactive" ActiveX (Score:5, Informative)

    by zsazsa (141679) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @05:06PM (#15020748) Homepage
    Before everybody says "good riddance," note that the upcoming IE update will simply mean you have to click first to enable interaction with the embedded object. This means that things like Flash ads and streaming video will still run automatically -- a user would need to click on them to be able to interact with them, i.e. find the tiny little "mute" or "close" button to make them go away. This page [baekdal.com] previews the update and shows exactly how it will change things.

    • Re:That doesn't hurt Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eccles (932) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:37PM (#15020495) Journal
      Just goes to show Microsoft shouldn't copy other people's designs and make their own to prevent this kind of problem.

      Tim Berners-Lee wrote the USPTO calling for this patent to be overturned due to prior art. A broad embedded content patent in 1998? Pu-lease. It's as bogus as a $3 bill.

      • Re:That doesn't hurt Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gid13 (620803) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:43PM (#15020546)
        Software patents AT ALL is a problem. I don't care if it was the first person who patented something like this suing, it's just not good for the end user. Suppose MS patented browser extensions, and then sued Firefox or Opera devs... And they probably will start doing stuff like this in light of this decision. I'm no MS fan, but I was on their side for this case. No good can come of this.

    • Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Serapth (643581) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:38PM (#15020508)
      Frankly after reading the article I havent got a clue where they came up with the ads part.

      However, the gist I got from it is any embeded auto playing content ( heres their example list: Adobe's Reader and Flash, Apple's QuickTime Player, Microsoft's Windows Media Player, RealNetworks' RealPlayer and Sun's JVM ) will require activation before playing.
      So for example, if you go to a page that has a stock ticker applet in it, instead of it automatically scrolling the current stock market stats, you will have to click it to start. However, if this is true, it would pretty much make Flash useless, as flash based GUIs would become irritating, flash based start pages wouldnt work right, etc...

      Lastly, what I dont understand beyond the above question is... why arent Firefox, Opera, Safari etc... also affected?

      No matter what you think of Microsoft, in the end, this is bad for the end user and the web in general. Insert misc active X jokes in your replys all you want, you would be suprised how much of the daily web actually depends on this stuff.

      • Re:Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mingot (665080) on Wednesday March 29 2006, @04:45PM (#15020564)
        Lastly, what I dont understand beyond the above question is... why arent Firefox, Opera, Safari etc... also affected?

        Because the guy who owns the patent has stated that he is only going to sue microsoft.

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