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What is with "Flash" plug-ins?

KonradKonrad Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
Has anyone else noticed on WebPages with Flash that you now have to "click to activate." It's not just my home PC ~ it's my work PC and every PC in the office. It happens with IE and FireFox.

I've not seen anything on slash-dot, onion, etc about this and it's driving me nuts. It ruins flash heavy WebPages! :(

Comments

  • MundaneMundane Elite Ranger
    Yup, Microsoft was ordered by a judge to fix it....some sort of patent problem. ActiveX controls cannot be automatically enabled.
  • KonradKonrad Ranger
    I didn't realize Flash used Active X in any way?! How do they tie together?

    Does that mean if I have all active X actions as auto denied in my security settings Flash should not work? What about Linux users?
  • BigglesBiggles <font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
    [QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Mundane [/i]
    [B]Yup, Microsoft was ordered by a judge to fix it....some sort of patent problem. ActiveX controls cannot be automatically enabled. [/B][/QUOTE]

    Flash is not ActiveX, and that patent had nothing to do with running stuff in plugins. MS lost a patent case where they had automatic installation of plugins in IE when needed by a webpage, so now you have to click through a dialog box to install plugins. However, they can still run automatically.

    I haven't seen anything where you need to click any flash object to start it in IE. Many video sites that use the flash video player require a click on it to activate it when the video is embedded in another page. There is also an extension for Firefox that replaces flash objects with a button you have to click to start them. It brings sanity back to pages that use lots of flash--based advertisements, so it became quite popular. I wouldn't be surprised if Mozilla had started providing the behaviour by default in Firefox.
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