Microsoft licenses patent from Eolas

With any luck you will soon be able to chuck SWFObject* and go back using embed and object to include Flash movies in your documents.

Microsoft has licensed the patent it was found liable of infringing upon. This means that Internet Explorer will soon handle ActiveX content (Flash, QuickTime, etc.) the way it did before the decision in the patent case.

Your work style won’t have to change, however. You can still use SWFObject or the newer SWFFix (or your own custom scripts) — but you no longer have to.

* I don’t recommend chucking it since SWFObject offers things like version checking that make it worth using.

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Published 11 Dec 2007 • Permalink

Categories: Browsers, Internet Explorer

Tags: Flash, activex, eolas, microsoft, swffix, swfobject

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Comments

AG said on 13 Dec 2007 at 5:52 am

Heh, I would love to see ActiveX wither and die. It will never become a standard and is generally despised by end-users and developers alike. I never liked the idea of a web app taking over arbritrary resources on my box.

tiffany said on 13 Dec 2007 at 10:00 am

The problem is that M$ also considers Flash and Quicktime ‘ActiveX’ objects. If the developer didn’t use JavaScript to write the movie to the browser window, you would have to click twice in order to, say, stop an auto start movie from playing.

Still, I’m quite happy to see that they’ve ponied up the cash to get rid of this issue.

Tiffany B. Brown

Microsoft licenses patent from Eolas

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