Coming soon to an IE near you – No more "Click to activate this control"
Great news at the IEBlog:
Back in April 2006, we made a change to how Internet Explorer handled embedded controls used on some webpages. Some sites required users to “click to activate” before they could interact with the control. Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the “click to activate” requirement in Internet Explorer. Because of this, we’re removing the “click to activate” behavior from Internet Explorer!
It’s important (and cool) to note that this change will require no modifications to existing webpages, and no new actions for developers creating new pages. We are simply reverting to the old behavior. Once Internet Explorer is updated, all pages that currently require “click to activate” will no longer require the control to be activated. They’ll just work.
So you’re probably wondering when we are going to release this update? The first chance will be with an optional preview release, called the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview, available in December 2007 via the Microsoft Download Center. Additionally this change will be made part of the next pre-release versions of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. After giving people enough time to prepare for this change, we’ll roll this behavior into the IE Cumulative Update in April 2008, and all customers who install the update will get the change.
More at the source.
November 27, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
Is there any security issue here? When browsing, I like the ability to determine if certain things are going to execute or not (be it for security or spam-reduction). This sounds like I will now lose that control with the next update to IE.
November 27, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
Dave Massy posted the following comment on his post at IEBlog:
“This doesn’t make any difference to browsing speed or security. The “Click to Activate” thing does NOT prevent a control from running. “Click to Activate” only prevents a user from interacting with the control until they have clicked on it. This was never and should never be seen as a security enhancement.
Use the “Manage Add-ons” option under tools if you want to prevent controls from actually running.”