Frank Scuccimarri, good friend of mine, complained about a weird behaviour on the site http://www.flirtmontreal.com which we put online a little while ago. Basically to change languages you need to click on a link which is inside the header animation; in flash. In firefox this works no problem, but in Internet Explorer you need to click twice; once to activate the control, a second time to click on the link itself. As I found out by searching on google this is due to the fact Microsoft lost a legal battle over a software patent: they aren't allowed to automatically load and install activex controls (or something like that).

As it turns out the fix is 4 lines of javascript and uses an apparent bug in IE, because a line of javascript that reads:

can't do all that much, except force IE to reparse the html? dunno.

For a more detailed explanation, click here.

Oh and this bug doesn't appear unless you upgrade to the latest Windows XP patches. I think it dates from a little while ago, but.. you know.. i use IE once every blue moon.. so..

Peace.

Filed under: bug, fix, flash, internet explorer, javascript, legal, microsoft