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Microsoft Confirms IE Changes in Wake of Lawsuit 481

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-is-just-strange dept.
theodp writes "On Monday, Microsoft verified that it will be making what it calls "modest" changes to Windows and IE to meet the requirements of the jury verdict against it in the Eolas patent infringement case. Microsoft says it will finish making the changes to IE and Windows by early next year and will provide developers that use IE technology with documentation to help them modify their applications, Web pages, and browser plug-ins to work with the new plug-in scheme, which affects all Web pages that use plug-in technologies such as Adobe Reader, Apple QuickTime, Macromedia Flash, RealNetworks RealOne, all versions of Java, and Windows Media Player. A preview of the new user experience shows the user being prompted to confirm loading of each ActiveX control."
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Microsoft Confirms IE Changes in Wake of Lawsuit

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  • Ok, what ever happened to holding everyones IP so valued?

  • ..And the others? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Locky ( 608008 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:07AM (#7152203) Homepage
    And what about Mozilla? Opera? K-Meleon? Safari?

    Is it clear just how much this patent ruling will affect the internet as we know it?
    • They didn't and probably arn't suing mozilla, etc.
      So mozilla doesn't have to make any changes.
      Unlike trademark you only have to enforcement patents if you want to.

    • Re:..And the others? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Intosi ( 6741 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:14AM (#7152278) Homepage
      See this pressrelease [mozilla.org] for more information.

    • Re:..And the others? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by the_mad_poster ( 640772 ) <shattoc@adelphia.com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:14AM (#7152283) Homepage Journal

      This is a very good point.

      This is probably one of the very few times we'd want to see Microsoft win a case like this. Eolas claims that they're just going after Microsoft, but who's next? They can clobber the living daylights out of all sorts of other people now in a misguided bid to make money on litigation (the New Gold Rush, anyone?).

      The door swings both ways: if Microsoft is abusing companies (ok, bad choice - IBM or Amazon might be better) with a ridiculous set of patents, we should be yelling. However, if Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, etc. is being abused by a ridiculous set of patents, we need to yell just as loud.

      How does that go... oh yes:

      "And when they came for me, there was noone left to speak out for me."

      • Re:..And the others? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BESTouff ( 531293 )
        This is probably one of the very few times we'd want to see Microsoft win a case like this.

        Not at all. USA has a bad patent system made for big corporations and lawyers. Letting Microsoft win this case would show furthermore that law isn't really a problem when you have more lawyers.

        The problem is the law. It's stupid. Change it.

        • Re:..And the others? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by greenhide ( 597777 ) <jordanslashdot@c ... m ['lle' in gap]> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:57AM (#7153182)
          The problem isn't the law, per se. It's the problems that come up when this sort of law is applied in the same way to software as it is to more physical inventions. If I went in and tried to patent "A method for converting harvested grains to a flour substance", I'd be told that my patent wasn't specific enough. But I could patent "Using text and images for business on the Internet" [slashdot.org]. Actually, I couldn't. PanIP [panip.com] already did that. Many years after the Internet, Amazon and all, were live and kicking. Prior art existed; why in the hell did they get that patent? There need to be technology specialists working in the PTO -- geeks like us who read Slashdot, who are paranoid about infringing on the rights of others and think through before just granting patents on anything to anyone.

          In this case, the patent was put into place well before it was being used in actual browsers, so there isn't as much a prior art issue as a specificity issue. Generally, I think that because software can have such a broad application (imagine the hell we would live in if someone had patented the general concept of a database - "a data storage system with efficient retrieval systems" and so on) it is important to make sure that the language of the patent forces a company to work out its own solution to the problem, but doesn't prevent it from an entire branch of technological innovation.

          Also, editors -- why isn't "Patents" one of the topics for this story? This is clearly taking place only because patents are being exercised; everybody here is talking about the patents. Listing this story under "Patents" will make sure that if someone is trying to look up or research examples of egregious patents being used as IP weapons (even against such a hated enemy/Slashdot sponsor as Microsoft).

      • Re:..And the others? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by pirhana ( 577758 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:38AM (#7152499)
        >This is probably one of the very few times we'd want to see Microsoft win a case like this
        Not me ! I want Microsoft to loose this case. If microsoft loose this case, more and more people will become aware of the danger of software patents. Nobody is going to realise the danger of software patents when a handful of Free software projects are affected. This specific case has drawn a lot of attention to the issue of software patents because its microsoft at one end. I wish more and more software lawsuits come up and more and more people become aware of this. There is nothing to be complacent when microsoft or somebody like them win a couple of lawsuits and software patents largly remain.

      • More so since (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:11AM (#7152775)
        This guy seems to be doing it for a vendetta, not for money. If it was purely a money thing, the free browsers would have little worry since they aren't good targets. I mean, no point taking someone to court who has no assets, it'll just be a waste of your time and money. Well he's not out for that reason, despite asking lots of money, he's out to cripple Microsoft. Ok, many people here would say that's a good thing (I'd say it's anti-capatalistic, but never mind). However, what happens if he gets a burr up his ass about another browser? Say he decides that Opera is unfair, since it charges money and he thinks all browsers should be no cost. Or maybe he gets in a abr fight with a Mozilla dev and gets mad at Mozilla. Then what? He can again use his patent as a weapon.

        However, what he does is really not relivant. The point is that patents should NOT be allowed to be used as weapons by anyone, small or large. The point of a patent, and this is explicitly(*) spelled out, is to provide an inventor some protection so they can make money off an idea in the intrestes of promoting PROGRESS. In other words, you get a time limited right to your idea that people can't infringe on, so you are encouraged to share it with the world to use, and recieve compensation as a result. It isn't so some random guy or corperation that didn't invent shit can play bully with people.

        Patent bullying needs to be stopped period.

        (*): It's article 1, section 8, clause 8 of the constitution: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

  • Stimulus:Response (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TopShelf ( 92521 ) * on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:08AM (#7152211) Homepage Journal
    While $520 million might be a drop in Microsoft's $40 billion bucket, it's still a big enough factor to warrent a change in practices. Too bad the anti-trust efforts didn't enjoy this level of success...

    • This wasn't really a Good Thing (tm) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:14AM (#7152282) Homepage
      You're ignoring (probably intentionally) the awful precident this sets in regards to the enforcement of (ridiculous) software patents. Let's recognize what is truly the greater evil here.

      • Quite right, Eolas are truly a greater evil... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:18AM (#7152828)
        I quite agree, Eolas are a much worse evil in this instance (though I'm sure they do not seem themselves that way, they no doubt belive they are heros of some kind), I was so disgusted I sent them the following email...

        To: info@eolas.com
        Date: Tue Oct 07, 2003 03:09:36 PM BST
        Subject: Congratulations on your lawsuit

        I would like to congratulate you on managing to successfully sue Microsoft and still manage to be seen as a despicable bunch of malevolent malcontents by the public at large (including industry professionals).

        By exploiting the US legal and patent system and it's weaknesses (in particular it's notorious inability to deal with technical software cases) and infecting the rest of the world with your insipid patent claim (which is an insult to everybody with any knowledge of browsers, plugins, going as far back as the original inspiration for Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Atkinson's HyperCard) you have made the web a less pleasant experience, and you haven't actually contributed anything new to the concept of software plugins (those of us who remember HyperCards XCMD's are more than aware of that, even if the US patent office and the courts were not).

        I'm sure your all convincing yourselves you've 'slain a giant' and that you are trying to re-enforce that opinion among yourselves for your own benefit, even though the rest of the world is largely telling you otherwise, most vocally. I'm sure you will casually disregard the voices you do not wish to hear.

        Many people (those working for free in the open source world, as well as plugin developers and commercial software developers and web content maintainers) will now have to spend many man years working on an alternative non-patent-infringing format so they can be sure to remain free from your legal shenanigans. This is time that they could have spent working on other free an open software for the benefit of everyone (or who knows, even at the park, or at home with their families!). Not to mention all the end users that will be effected by this and who will have to now spend time downloading, installing and working around 'fixes' that will be necessary in the wake of your decision to sue.

        In your own special way, you have truly made the world a worse place to live in.

        Congratulations.

        --
    • It's 1/80th of their entire (alleged *) bank balance. You might think twice if you had to pay that as a fine.

      * I think that they did an Enron, and have been good at hiding it.

      • I think that they did an Enron, and have been good at hiding it.

        Why? Because they're "Micro$oft"? Or do you have actual evidence to support such a claim?
      • Actually, Microsoft is well respected in financial circles for "quality of earnings." That's Wall Street jargon for "we actually understand how and where you make your money," as opposed to the Enrons of the world who were basically playing a massive shell game.
      • The $40 bn alleged to be on the books is a drop in the bucket (about 2 percent) of a $2.34 trn fine [zdnet.co.uk]. Most likely it is Enron-style funny money, seeing as that company actually ran an $18 bn loss in 1998 and their only two profitable sectors are both losing market share and coming down in price. Lawsuits and penalties for false advertising, inexcusably poor security, and anti-trust actions are starting to accumulate. It was to computing what big tobacco was to sports.

        Besides, it was announced months

  • uhg (Score:3)

    by Meeble ( 633260 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:09AM (#7152218) Journal

    all these products are supposed to enrich the quality of the living web ::not:: cause more pain by inflicting pop up warnings and alert boxes.

    so now I need to accept 3 alert boxes before I can hit skip on your flash splash page ?? ;)

    • Re:uhg (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lordvdr ( 682194 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:57AM (#7152643)
      You bring up what could be an unintended benefit to this ruling. Perhaps developers will now stick to more friendly interfaces. I rarely stay long at a company's page that utilizes flash extensively (and almost entirely avoid pages that only use flash (for interface, content, etc.)).

      If a visitor goes to the page and nothing comes up but a little notice that says, "Stuff didn't load", they will leave without the company getting its message across. That will encourage the company to have a web page that uses html and jscript and php and whatnot to get there message across and will limit plug-ins to only the content that really needs it.

      Additionally, While I use Windows, IIS, etc. I don't use things like ActiveX Controls on web pages. I think there are better ways to go about it. Now, when a company is developing it's great new intranet app, will they use ActiveX Controls and force the employee to load each page twice (and waste MONEY), or will they come up with a newer and/or better way to do the same stuff?

      Don't get me wrong, I don't agree w/ this decision, but maybe it will have some unintended benefits.
  • Man, judging by that preview, this really sucks, for endusers as well as developers. The whole "does this load external data" thing is like trying to program in a new language, "Legalese.NET".
  • Sorry. The words "Microsoft", "IE", and "User Experience" in the same sentence as "user will be prompted to load each ActiveX control"....

    Brings a tear to me eye. :)

    You mean...something GOOD came out of a lawsuit with Microsoft? W00t!

    On the OSS side of things, this should be a (small) boon to projects like Konq and Mozilla that aren't going to require all the online applications and plugins to be re-coded.

    • Re:Bwa ha ha ha ha! *snicker* BWA HA HA HA HA! (Score:5, Informative)

      by platypus ( 18156 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:18AM (#7152333) Homepage
      This annoying feature was already present in one form in IE. If you check "don't start ActiveX controls" (or whatever this option was called), the dumb thing pops up a dialog box complaining about how you'll not see this site in it's full beauty because you don't like ActiveX.
      For every page, and for every damned control embeded in this page (IIRC, it's a while since I last used IE)

      I'm glad the the yes-to-active-x fraction now gets their own piece of the pie ;).

  • IE changes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by someguy42 ( 609667 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:10AM (#7152234)
    I, for one, particularly like the idea of being notified before my browser loads an ActiveX control. Sounds to me like a feature that should already be in the browser for security purposes anyway. Yes, I know it's a user changeable option, but honestly, how many "Joe Sixpack" users know the option's there anyway, much less what it means?

    • Re:IE changes (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Asprin ( 545477 ) <gsarnold@y[ ]o.com ['aho' in gap]> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:17AM (#7152329) Homepage Journal

      Yeah, but the warning dialog is conspicuously missing a "Cancel" button.

      ...of course, you **could** go into the IE security config and set it to prompt you when loading signed and unsigned controls -- THAT one has a cancel button...

    • I, for one, particularly like the idea of being notified before my browser loads an ActiveX control. Sounds to me like a feature that should already be in the browser for security purposes anyway. Yes, I know it's a user changeable option, but honestly, how many "Joe Sixpack" users know the option's there anyway, much less what it means?

      If Joe Sixpack doesn't know what the option means, then he's not going to really care about the dialog box informing him that an ActiveX component is being loaded.

      This

  • Good or Bad? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Shaklee39 ( 694496 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:10AM (#7152235)
    As much as everyone here wants to see microsoft go down, there a thousands of windows applications that rely on these and you can bet that not all of them will be updated anytime soon. Many programs use OLE with WMP and IE to have these features but it sounds like older applications will now be incompatible.

  • Unexpected. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 3Suns ( 250606 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:10AM (#7152237) Homepage
    Huh, who'da thunk it. I expected MS to buy the Eolas patent, or Eolas itself if necessary, and turn the patent against AOL/Netscape, Opera, and the rest of their competition. They're actually not being vicious bastards in this one...

    • Re:Unexpected. (Score:5, Informative)

      by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 ) <sherwin@amiraGAUSSn.us minus math_god> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:25AM (#7152393) Homepage Journal
      Eolas didn't let them.

      Eolas is a 100% private company. All owned by its 1 employee.

      No possibility of a hostile takeover there.

      Eolas wasn't willing to sell the patent. I don't remember the article, but the Eolas guy specifically says that he wanted to use his patent to change the landscape of the broswer industry; he talks about allowing other browsers back into the market by only enforcing his patent against Microsoft (and wining a HUGE chunk of change in the process).
      • No possibility of a hostile takeover there.

        Yeah, but what are the possibilities of a "tragic accident" happening to this guy?

        Think the heirs to this guys fortune would not want to cash in if MS made them a deal they could not refuse?

      • Re:Unexpected. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Darren Winsper ( 136155 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:08AM (#7152744)
        While I can understand his motive, I'm not fond of it at all. Abusing an over-abused process to get your way is going to encourage other people to do it if you win. Besides, it gives the IE advocates ammo along the lines of "Mozilla only survived because MS was forced to cripple IE".

      • Re:Unexpected. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Joe U ( 443617 ) *
        Gee, thanks, 95% of my users are pissed off. But he wanted to make a statement.

        What did he think was going to happen, suddenly everyone is going to switch from IE? Bzzz, wrong answer. It's nearly impossible to get people to upgrade from Netscape 4, switching browsers would be like pulling teeth.

        Mozilla and company better hope that the fix still lets plugins work with their browsers, because that's going to be how it's fixed. It's going to make the web more IE centric and the sites will be fixed to work wi
      • but the Eolas guy specifically says that he wanted to use his patent to change the landscape of the broswer industry; he talks about allowing other browsers back into the market by only enforcing his patent against Microsoft

        I fail to see how this will "change the landscape of the broswer industry". Microsoft published instructions on how to create web pages that do not prompt the user. Greater than 90% of web browsers are IE. So every web developement firm (or company that puts up it's own public websit

    • Re:Unexpected. (Score:2, Funny)

      by fritter ( 27792 )
      Huh, who'da thunk it. I expected MS to buy the Eolas patent, or Eolas itself if necessary, and turn the patent against AOL/Netscape, Opera, and the rest of their competition. They're actually not being vicious bastards in this one...

      Right now, Bill Gates is smacking himself on the forehead.

  • Thanks, Eolas! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JanusFury ( 452699 ) <kevin,gadd&gmail,com> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:11AM (#7152247) Homepage Journal
    My web browsing experience just got even better!

    It guess it just goes to show you that at the end of the day, someone will always find a new way to screw everyone else over for money.

    Even though it's just Microsoft, I can't help but think that this is going to end up affecting other stuff too. Once a company like Eolas gets away with this garbage, I doubt they'll quit while they're ahead. I see more lawsuits like this in the future.

  • Law of unintended consequences (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxruby@com[ ]t.net ['cas' in gap]> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:11AM (#7152252)
    Law of unintended consequences steps up to the plate. This security enhancement took a half billion dollar patent lawsuit to be brought about. What will bring about the next one be and how much will it cost? Maybe, just maybe, they will someday learn that fluid integration of third party code without user approval is a bad idea?
    • Security Enhancement? Uh, I think not. Once you are prompted to run the script, what's stopping you from running it? Nothing has changed really.

    • Re:Law of unintended consequences (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Chilles ( 79797 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:03AM (#7152704)
      people will only get so used to clicking "OK" to various "do you want to run this?" prompts that less than cluefull people will install thousands of trojans, 0900 dialers, new search/start pages and whatever per surfing day.
      This is IMO the worst thing that could have come out of this case ever except maybe MS buying Eolas and using the patent against other browsers...
    • This security enhancement took a half billion dollar patent lawsuit to be brought about.

      This is not a "security enhancement". IE already come shipped to prompt before installing any ActiveX controls (the famous "Always trust content by Microsoft Corporation" window is the one I'm talking about here).

      What this is doing is forcing the browser to prompt in every instance that an ActiveX control is used, which, by the way, you can currently set IE to do as well, but it doesn't come defaulted to do so -- the
  • Yeah, they agreed to a list of stuff. [lostbrain.com]

    tcd004

  • Oppertunity Knocks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Malicious ( 567158 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:12AM (#7152260)
    What I see when I look at this new format, is a whole new era of popup ads. With Microsoft now requiring you to click 'Ok' before you can play a flash game, or watch a video, there will no doubt be an entire genre of popup ads designed to look just like these windows.
    Ad ware will run rampant, as users are clicking OK left, right and center.
    • I just hope they "accidently" make it easily hackable. ie, keep all the code for working as normal, but just have a little conditional jump which executes this patent friendly crap code. Thus you can easily restore IE to its 'better' state with a one byte hack, without getting Microsoft into trouble.

  • Licence it? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by oolon ( 43347 )
    Why can't Microsoft just licence the patent? Its interesting to see to matter what happens and what it costs microsoft will aways prefer to get round something that pay for it, even if it would be cheaper to pay for it.

    James

    • Why can't Microsoft just licence the patent? Its interesting to see to matter what happens and what it costs microsoft will aways prefer to get round something that pay for it, even if it would be cheaper to pay for it.

      They're still appealing againts the ruling. Perhaps they'll licence it if they lose.

      But if MS win, there may be a good legal precedent that judges can use to throw out other unreasonable software patents. I'm pleased they're pouring money into that.

  • Everybody loses (Score:3, Insightful)

    by davetrainer ( 587868 ) <<moc.reniartevad> <ta> <todhsals>> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:14AM (#7152277)
    You can determine if a user's version of Internet Explorer exhibits the new behavior by examining the user agent string. If it contains the token AXCompat, then the browser has the new behavior.

    Fantastic. More browser sniffing, more money spent on more developer time to code workarounds for the new behavior, and more dialogs to arbitrarily disrupt user experience.

  • Same as my current IE experience (Score:4, Insightful)

    by j_dot_bomb ( 560211 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:16AM (#7152297)
    To be really careful about security, I turn Active X off on all sites except a few. I get that annoying "This site may not display properly ...." message and cant get rid of it (Microsoft dosent want me to not use Active X remember) Now -users- of Active X will have it just as bad or worse it appears.
    • When I was a user of IE, I had this problem before (Now I'm on Linux :)

      I simply used SoftICE to get rid of this dialog box. (usual disassemble, trace, patch)

      If you don't have SoftICE, I imagine that W32dasm or even Visual studio can accomplish this task, too.
  • If you look at the site [microsoft.com] they show a new tag, NOEXTERNALDATA, which basically nullifies this change... I think we will see a lot of sites violating the patent while Microsoft sits is in compliance.

    Sometimes it helps to read...
    • Sometimes it helps to read...

      Err...yeah. I haven't done much with OBJECT and PARAM tags, but it looks to me like NOEXTERNALDATA can surpress the prompt, but if you then rely on external data, your object won't work. I don't think this "nullifies this change" at all. There are then other hacks, like using base64 to put your binary data inline in the page.

      See, it helps to read, also to understand what you're reading.
    • The NOEXTERNALDATA tag can only be used when there are no parameters passed. If I simply have as their example shows, then the plugin will load, but will not know where to load data from. It'd be similar to loading the flash plugin but not pointing it to a data file... pretty useless.

      Additional parameters (like a file) would be ignored if NOEXTERNALDATA is specified.

      Oddly enough, the tag is theoretically the correct way to embed images, depending on how you read the HTML spec. Can you imagine a popup co

  • oh great! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by phantast ( 35247 )
    And I just finished training all my users to NOT click OK on boxes that pop-up when using the web. Now you're saying I have to train them to make educated decisions to accept or decline boxes?

    The monkey trainers at the circus will have an easier time...
    • Take a leaf from the school or rat training. No, seriously: place a device on the user's desk that can dispense cheese, connect their chair up to the mains through a remotely controlled switch. Now set up your corporate intranet so that it randomly pops up boxes in a user's browser - if the user clicks on the right button, give them a piece of cheese. If they get it wrong, well, that's what the mains connection to the chair is for!

      You'll have a group of individuals quite capable of navigating a moderate si
  • This is one good example where enforcing the patent clearly isn't in the interests of the consumer (not that it's ever supposed to be). But now loads of web developers are going to have to go and put in horrible hacks and change code so that users aren't pestered by yet more pop-up messages and warnings that scare them away from using the Internet.

    Presumably all the other browsers will follow suit in time?

  • Patents & innovation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Koos Baster ( 625091 ) <`ghostbusters' `at' `xs4all.nl'> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:17AM (#7152326)
    Sigh.
    IMHO the Eolas vs M$ case proves once and for all that (software) patents -- used with good or bad intentions -- frustrate rather than further innovation.

    --
    Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it -- Andrew Young
    • > Eolas vs M$ [...] proves [...](software) patents [...] frustrate rather than further innovation.

      'Guess YHO is based on this paragraph:

      >The lawsuit could have huge repercussions for other browser makers if Microsoft's expected appeal falls flat: Browsers such as Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, and Safari all use similar means to add plug-in capabilities.

      Right? I totally agree.

      --
      As Zeus said to Narcissus: "watch yourself"
  • get IEradicator (sorry, no link, search google) and get rid of this crap completely.

  • not a security feature :) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dirtydamo ( 160364 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:21AM (#7152351)
    I love how Microsoft, after a $500 million lawsuit, finally plans on putting a dialog box in that the user must click through to load an ActiveX control... ...when designing this dialog box, you'd you'd think someone would have mentioned how easy it would be to put a "Yes"/"No" choice in it. Right? Because sometimes users might want to not load controls, for various nefarious reasons we are all aware of. Right? Right???

    wrong [microsoft.com]

  • They're already working around it! (Score:5, Informative)

    by rkent ( 73434 ) <rkent@@@post...harvard...edu> on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:22AM (#7152358)
    Ha! From that page: "If the OBJECT element used to load the control contains PARAM elements but none of the PARAM elements specify a source of data external to the current Web page, then the control does not access remote data" and so the user will not be prompted.

    I suppose that this is one of the concessions they were required to make: plugin content that "specifies a source of data external to the current page" was probably convered specifically by the patent in question.

    But here's the VERY NEXT sentence: "The OBJECT element for an ActiveX control has a new attribute: NOEXTERNALDATA. Specify true for this attribute to indicate that the control does not access remote data and that Internet Explorer should not prompt the user." Notice that this doesn't say "specify this tag and we'll CHECK to see if there's external data." It's basically a way to turn off the prompt, no questions asked.

    In fact, the code example directly following specifies a "param url=", which sounds a helluva lot like a "source of external data" to me. Is it just me, or does this directly flout the entire point of the changes? I can't imagine that's an accident... I think MS just said "here, we'll change our default behavior, but we'll let users subvert the change starting now."

    Ha!

    Other interpretations?

    • Not quite, read the rest: (Score:5, Informative)

      by Watts ( 3033 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:35AM (#7152478)

      The following example shows an OBJECT tag that loads a control without a prompt from Internet Explorer because the NOEXTERNALDATA attribute is set to true. The control does not receive the URL property.

      In other words, the control doesn't get that URL parameter, it's just loading the component without a data source.

    • Hey, if they keep doing that, they can confuse and drag out the court battle so long that browsers will be irrelevant and Elcomsoft will be bankrupt.

      Sort of like what happened to Netscape.

  • E=0 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by edalytical ( 671270 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:23AM (#7152375)
    If anyone has read Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface" they know that a dialog box that allows only one action has a information theoretic efficiency of 0 (E=0). He was referring to dialog boxes with that at least told the user something important or useful, "Finished searching document" for example. But this [microsoft.com] takes the cake. E must equal -1 (E=-1) they might as well just have a dialog box with a button and no message at all.

    • The button wasn't meant to be informative... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JMZero ( 449047 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:17AM (#7152824) Homepage
      ..or useful or good in any real way - but I suppose you already knew that.

      I think we'll be seeing more and more of this garbage in the years to come - software coded awkwardly to get around useless patents.

      My solution? Cut the time on software/business patents to 3 years. Plenty of time to build a lead based on a valid new idea - very little opportunity to "pre-patent" an obvious idea to extort with later.
  • Is this company alleging that any application that has pluggable pieces must prompt before executing them? That would affect event major application on the market! Browsers, office suites, testing software, databases, installers, media apps, games, etc. Many critical applications would completely break if they had to prompt the user.

    Nuclear Operator 2.73
    Plutonium inserted successfully.
    Would you like to run the radiation level check?
    [Yes] [No]

    "Oops! Hey Boss - I accidentally clicked *-boom-*..."
  • by updating your code. I updated http://media.accettura.com [accettura.com] last night to use a JS method recommended. Seems to work in all browsers I tested at the the moment. No dialog from IE's new release... only difference is JS is now required to see the object. But I don't think many people have JS still disabled.
  • Having 99% replaced ie with mozilla all I can say is "who gives a shit !"

    It seems that microsoft has become disinterested in the browser, probably feeling that ie6 is as far as they need to go.

    They couldn't be more wrong.

    I think it's time I got all my work colleagues to switch - most of them wouldn't know the difference anyway ;)
  • ...based on the MSDN user experience page, this is going to prompt the use of the late-coming OBJECT tag, which is designed to be a nice fallback system to display alternative content if existing mechanisms aren't in place; eg, if an outer OBJECT block can't find a plug-in or isn't given permission, then it can fall back to the next inner-level OBJECT (maybe an image), or if no image capacities are their (in the case of lynx), fall back to a plain text HTML-based OBJECT. This tag was introduced in HTML 4,
  • How many nanoseconds do you think it will take before someone releases a patch to get rid of this stupid irritating behaviour? Hopefully Microsoft themselves will 'leak' an alternate DLL that allows us to have a current IE, but without this stupid warning poping up every single time someone's got a bit of Flash on their page.

    What was the patent anyway? "Allowing embedded content to load without telling the user with a yellow pop-up"? I can't think of anything sensible they could have patented, which would
  • I guess this means Moz is safe?
  • the user being prompted to confirm loading of each ActiveX control.

    A few years ago, I was involved in building an application where the front end was a bunch of nested ActiveX controls. I can just imagine how the UE for that app is going down the tubes. I mean, who doesn't want to click "OK" fifteen times just to log into an application.

    Its been some time... Is there any new development occurring with ActiveX or is that part of the planned obselesence with .NET?

  • Is it just me.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by webrunner ( 108849 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @08:39AM (#7152507) Homepage Journal
    Is it just me or is an alert box with just an OK button completely worthless in this case? All it does is delay loading the control without giving the user the ability to not have it load. The user only has two choices: load the potentially dangerous control, or leave the dialog box on screen. This doesn't solve any of the problems and just adds more headaches to the browsing experience.

  • DATA element (Score:2, Insightful)

    by GenericJoe ( 16255 )
    Looking at the changes to the user experience document from MS, it seems to me that this may be trivial in the long run.

    You can't pass "PARAM" lines with clear text data, but you *can* pass DATA lines with base64 encoded data. So what do we need to do? Encode our PARAM data lines, of course.

    This may break the patent ... and it may not, depending on the way it was written (anyone have a link to the patent itself?) If not, then all we need are some good mime-encoders. The main bad part, I guess, is getti
  • The developer preview they have is a standalone version of IE. In other words, it doesn't affect anything else on your system, and it can be completely uninstalled.

    Didn't Microsoft say this sort of thing was impossible, back in the days of the antitrust suit? Might we have evidence of perjury on our hands?

  • At least they were able to keep COM as the method of creating plug-ins. With Microsoft so invested in COM and, as such, most other companies writing for the MS platform, this was my biggest concern. It has come along way in years, and the interfaces required of ActiveX controls - as well as more secure sandboxing - are pushing the ActiveX guidelines to help developers write more secure code. It would've been a waste to have to drop it all, not to mention millions or billions in re-development costs.

    Any de

  • Lotus Notes R3 (Score:2, Informative)

    by dobber ( 160548 )
    What ever happened to Lotus Notes R3 being offered as prior art? IANAL, but that seemed to be a great argument.

    http://www.ozzie.net/blog/stories/2003/09/12/savin gTheBrowser.html [ozzie.net]

  • The patent system is out of control (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jotham ( 89116 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:21AM (#7152855)
    This is ridiculous. Basically the ruling appears to state that:

    Plug-ins are OK as long they don't load external data
    If they do, microsoft can't load it for you without a prompt
    BUT you can document.write it in and avoid the prompt
    BUT only if the script is in an external file...

    So the key point here seems not to be with plug-ins (which obviously pre-date the patent) but plug-ins using EXTERNAL data...
    Now this just doesn't make sense. The HTML standard has ALWAYS supported full urls being used in ALL tag that can get data ie. <img src="http://external.com/image.gif"> In fact the HTML standard was written specifically so that it doesn't care if data is local or not.

    So in conclusion, why would Chewbacca live on Endor... this just does not make sense... I rest my case

  • Short-sighted is more like it. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @09:57AM (#7153179)
    All this Eolas guy did was clamp down on the independent browser makers -more-.

    so MS figures out a workaround... due to the fact that IE holds 95% of the market, all the big plugin vendors will change their access methods to support the new workaround.

    So web developers who wish maximum coverage (nearly all) will change their html code to support the new access method.

    Then, either other browser vendors have to spend just as much money to maintain compatibility, or they lose the features on any site that has switched to support 95% of the internet.

    And a small browser company's turnover time for making the change is going to be longer than MS, as they don't have the swarms of programmers. So it costs the independent software developers at least the same in programmer wages (excepting -purely- OSS browsers) to do the change, but costs them more in user-satisfaction and market-share as they have a longer time without the features, and they've lost programming time they could have been using to -improve- their own browser.

    How much time has the Opera or Safari team already lost just doing CYA code reviews to ensure they're not in an exposed legal position?

    And as for this altruistic notion that Eolas is only out to stop the Big Bad Guy... what happens if IE does lose market share to something like Opera? What happens when Eolas would suddenly decide that that Opera's business tactics weren't fair either?

    There's too much legal risk for a browser developer to -not- migrate to supporting the new method right away. Sure, they'll probably be backwards compatible to the old way - but what web developer wants to embed an activex plugin in their web content that is unusable to 95% of their potential market?

    Keep in mind that this new plugin requirement only needs to displays an 'Ok' box in the event that the plugin data is remote. Meaning if you go to homestarrunner.com and watch an sbemail flash movie hosted from homestarrunner.com - there's no messagebox; it's still a seamless experience.

    So what does this mean? Well... it does mean that you'll have to click Ok once for every remotely hosted activex ad (nightmare).

    I myself tend to think that web hosts would sooner drop plugin ads, or start hosting locally long before they'd suffer through potentially losing 95% of their viewers.

    (I certainly hope that IE ads a config option so I can disable remote activex data streams altogether. That'd be a pretty good adblocker. I guess there may be a silver lining.)

  • Everybody is missing the point... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @10:08AM (#7153255)
    The point of this dialog is NOT to enhance security, or give the user a choice, it's to get around the patent. That's it's only purpose.

  • A lesson for Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)

    by deadmonk ( 568008 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @11:16AM (#7153857) Homepage Journal
    From the article:

    "We believe the evidence will ultimately show that there was no infringement of any kind, and that the accused feature in our browser technology was developed by our own engineers based on pre-existing Microsoft technology," a Microsoft spokesperson said in early August when a federal court jury delivered its verdict.

    Welcome to what happens when you open Pandora's Box. What the lawyer/spokesperson/talking head missed here is that it *doesn't matter* if you built the system inside of a dark room sealed in a nuke-proof underground bunker - if someone else already has a patent on it, they own the idea. There is no "but *we* built this version!" cry that works, when someone 'patents software' they are essentially forbidding you to think or create without their permission.

    Copyright prevents you from lifting their code and claiming it as your own.
    Patents prevent you from building your own ideas if they happen to overlap someone else's.

  • Did you catch the workaround? (Score:5, Informative)

    by keytoe ( 91531 ) on Tuesday October 07, 2003 @02:17PM (#7155709) Homepage
    I haven't seen anybody mention this - but Apple has a page [apple.com] that describes a workaround for this for all you HTML developers out there. I checked it out, and almost spit coffee out my nose when I saw this:

    Here's an example of code (a simple tag) that will not function as it did previously when loaded in the changed version of Internet Explorer for Windows:


    <object classid="clsid:02BF25D5..." ...>
    <param name="src" value="sample.mov">
    </object>
    OK - so far so good. Then they get to this part:
    Create and place the external JS file on your site. In this example, call it foo.js. This script needs to document.write the full object/embed tag that was previously in your HTML file:


    function InsertSampleMovie()
    {
    document.write('<object classid="clsid: 02BF25D5..." ...>\n');
    document.write('<param name="src" value="sample.mov" />\n');
    document.write('</object>\n');
    }
    I can see where this is going...
    Replace each [object], [embed], or [applet]; tag with a call to the appropriate external files as follows:


    <script language="JavaScript"type="text/javascript" >InsertSampleMovie();</script>
    So- in summary: Writing the code directly in HTML is a violation and will trigger IE to spit the silly dialog box. Having JavaScript (and therefore the browser itself) write the offending code is just kosher. Wow.

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