Eolas Technologies won its patent infringement case against Microsoft, and in response, Microsoft has had to alter the way its IE Browser handles interactive content, such as that provided by Macromedia Flash, Apple QuickTime and RealNetworks.

IE Browser

Rather than just displaying the content, IE users will soon be presented with a dialog box – asking if the user would like to accept the interactive content — each time any new interactive content is to be displayed. On some pages, the dialog box will actually appear multiple times before the page will display appropriately, resulting in a less-than-optimal interactive experience for IE Browser.

Microsoft, as well as interactive component vendors such as Macromedia, Apple and RealNetworks, have come up with manual workarounds that site publishers can use to avoid their visitors being deluged with browser dialog boxes.

The changed browser will prompt the user before displaying active content that has been coded using “object”, “embed”, or “applet” tags in an HTML file. Site publishers need to replace these tags with a script that calls code outside of the HTML page in order for interactive content to work as expected in the changed version of IE.

* For instructions from Apple.

* For instructions from Macromedia .

* For instructions from RealNetworks.

Users will not see any changes until they upgrade to the latest version of IE Browser, which will not be available until January 2004, at the earliest. For more information, visit Microsoft’s page on the browser changes here.

Microsoft