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April 13, 2006

Internet Explorer / Eolas Update Causes Confusing Bugs

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Java

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One of the first things I do at work is check out my newest bugs, and today my bug queue was filled with bugs regarding our upload control, which happens to use ActiveX. I’m not a fan of using ActiveX for uploads - I hope to change to a hybrid use of single file HTTP upload and multi-file applet upload, but for now we do all of our multi-file uploads by using an Active X control.

The main problem I had with the patch was not the extra interaction required, but that enabling the ActiveX object with a click changes its position. An HTML table that appears above the DIV containing the ActiveX object suddenly disappeared from the page once the ActiveX object was enabled by a user click. We had previously thought that this update was not going to effect us since we could live with users being required to click on the ActiveX object before using it - but the repositioning of the object that we saw required a fix.

This article from devx talks about the lawsuit and is entitled “Users lose”. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate - users don’t really lose in this, developers do. The suggestion that Microsoft makes is that if you want to preserve current behavior, you simply use javascript to display the OBJECT, APPLET, or EMBED tag. You can do this by using document.write(”") to print out the tag, or use the DOM to add an OBJECT/EMBED/APPLET element, but this extra scripting step is required so that the user can immediately interact with whatever multimedia element is being displayed.

From a technical standpoint, this is kind of ridiculous. There’s no reason for these tags to work with the use of javascript but require user input otherwise. Javascript simply provides an interaction which can provide a path around the patent.

Who is to blame for this? Are Software Patents to blame for providing protection for something which seems so obvious and generic in applicability as plugins? Is Microsoft to blame for not respecting and licensing Eolas’s patent? Is Eolas to blame for patenting this process?