Recently while using the new Opera 9, I noticed that on some sites with Flash content a new message appeared: “Click to activate and use this control”.
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A little bit of background here: a tiny company called Eolas has been suing Microsoft for almost seven years over the use of plug-ins in a web browser. In 2003, a federal jury found Microsoft guilty of patent infringement to the tune of $520 million. The case has been appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which refused to hear the case in 2005. At this time the case has gone back to its original judge.
I noticed this the other day and it was really really annoying having to click on a plugin before you can interact with it. It’s really confusing too; when your watching a video and you click on the volume control, say, it doesn’t do anything. You’ve got to click it again. It’s not intuitive.
Internet Explorer is also supposed to have a similar behaviour though I’ve not actually been affected by it as I stay away from the monster.
Firefox doesn’t have this behaviour requiring you to click on the plug in before you can interact with it; I wonder whether the patent covers the way Mozilla implements plugins and whether Mozilla plan to implement similar behavior to stop the risk of a lawsuit. I personally think this patent is stupid and the company who patented it neither gains any money from the patent, nor have they made life any easier for all the web surfers who now have to click plugins to active them.