IE Update To Use Flash - Click Here to Click Here

The latest Windows update which rolled out on April 11^th affects every web site that uses any type of Active X control. The Flash player is probably the most widely affected application. We could ramble on about the specifics of what happened, but here is the gist: Microsoft lost a law suit for infringing on a patent involving the use of embedded objects in the browser, Microsoft modified Internet Explorer so that now in order for a user to interact with one of these embedded objects (like Flash) she must first click on the object to activate it.

This modification will adversely affect flash applications which require a user to mouse over or click on them before they engage or animate. Simple, non-interactive slideshows or animations will not be affected.

The upgrade path for avoiding the new restriction on Active X components involves the dynamic addition of code that embeds the information necessary to load external content such as compiled Flash files (.SWF’s). This needs to be done dynamically at run time to automatically activate the Active X content; as previously mentioned, the alternative forces the user to actually click on the content area to begin interacting with it.

To achieve this, the targeted area for the Flash content is wrapped in a <div> element that has a known id. Next a JavaScript function is called to populate the inner html of this <div> with a well formatted <object> tag with parameters set appropriately. An external JavaScript file is included that contains this function and parameters specific to the SWF file being loaded are set.

For further information Microsoft, and Adobe/Macromedia have written informative articles that outline the expected behavior, and different approaches for working around this issue:

Adobe/Macromedia

 ActiveX content does not load automatically in Microsoft Internet Explorer (Windows)
Active Content Developer Center
Active Content Update Article

Microsoft

Internet Explorer ActiveX update
Activating ActiveX Controls

All of the above links contain additional links for further reading: some are more technically oriented.