• Illustration: User Prompt Interrupts Page

Following a jury verdict against Microsoft in its patent litigation with Eolas, Microsoft has begun previewing changes to Internet Explorer (IE) that, if implemented, will force many Web designers to alter their sites to avoid unpleasant user experiences. Microsoft is making available a test version of IE which it believes will sidestep Eolas’s patent and allow Web designers to see how their sites will work with the potential changes.

Focus on ActiveX Controls

The dispute centers on IE’s handling of ActiveX controls and Java applets. Eolas has claimed, and a jury agreed, that IE violates its patent because it provides a way for ActiveX controls and Java applets embedded on a Web page to automatically download additional data.

As Microsoft has interpreted the jury's decision, all ActiveX controls or Java applets are affected unless they meet one of two conditions:

• They do not reference any remote data
• They are created dynamically from script that is loaded from another location.

To respond to the verdict, Microsoft is proposing a change to IE: when the altered version of IE encounters a page containing an affected control, it will present the user with a dialog box before loading the external data. (See the illustration "User Prompt Interrupts Page".) In Microsoft’s opinion, this interruption means the process is no longer automatic and therefore not subject to Eolas’s patent.

Unfortunately, because the prompt appears for each control on a page and because multimedia controls (such as Macromedia’s Flash) are often used many times on one page, this tactic will make many Web sites incredibly inconvenient to use. Using the test version of IE with the home page of the ESPN sports channel, for example, results in the user having to dismiss the dialog box six times.

In addition, some IT and third-party retail applications include Web browsing features that are built on IE technology. Such applications will also be affected by this change.

Workarounds Available

Microsoft and others (such as Apple, Macromedia, and RealNetworks) are detailing changes Web designers can make to their sites to prevent the dialog box from appearing.

First, the data required by the control can be embedded directly in the page rather than downloaded. While this workaround may be appropriate for some controls, it is unlikely to work for streaming media controls due to the size of video and audio data. In addition, most current media player controls do not support directly embedded data and would need to be updated.

Alternatively, Web designers can use script code (such as VBScript or JScript) to dynamically insert the appropriate control instead of placing the control directly in the HTML. In Microsoft’s opinion, this change skirts the Eolas patent, and therefore IE does not have to present the dialog box. However, this workaround requires changes to the underlying HTML and will not work if the user has disabled scripting in their browser. To make this change easier to implement, Macromedia is offering a set of tools that scan a Web site and, in some cases, automatically make the appropriate changes.

Organizations should realize that the changes to IE are only proposed, not definite—Microsoft and Eolas might work out an agreement under which current versions of IE can continue to be used, or the jury verdict might be overturned on appeal. Given this uncertainty, organizations would be wise to test their Web pages with the new version of IE and create a plan for altering affected pages now, but delay implementing this plan until Microsoft confirms that the next version of IE will definitely be altered and gives a release date for that alteration.

Resources

For more information and to obtain a test version of IE, see msdn.microsoft.com/ieupdate/default.asp.

For information on how Apple, Macromedia, and RealNetworks are affected, see developer.apple.com/internet/ieembedfix.html, www.macromedia.com/devnet/activecontent, and www.realnetworks.com/resources/howto/embedded/iechanges/index.html respectively.

For background on the jury verdict and a link to the patent in question, see "Eolas Verdict Impact, Be Suit Settled" on page 41 of the Oct. 2003 Update.