The Post-Eolas Web

Speaking of the updates needed, Apple has a nice article on updating your sites in the post-eolas web. Reading the work around makes it clear how stupid this whole matter is. Essentially the patent covers the automatic activation of inline plugins on websites. The new version of IE can still load the plugin, but only after a user has clicked to activate it. This activation step must occur every time the page is loaded. To get around this mess web developers can write a bit of Javascript to be activated on load that modifies the page DOM to include and activate the plugin. But the Javascript must be in a separate file. This skirts the auto-activation of inline plugins by the browser which the patent covers.

This solution points out a couple of things. First, how specific patents really are. Patents are generally not as broad as is supposed, particularly not as broad as the abstract to a patent would have you believe. They can be skirted and avoided as this situation shows. Secondly, this is just plain dumb. We’re wasting hours of productivity to do what? Only what we already could do before. And why? Because the patent system is broken. I don’t see how this decision helped to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” If anything, it is hindering it. The post-eolas web is something that should not have happened. Perhaps large costs of this disaster will finally wake a few more people up to the criticality of the situation.