How to Bypass “Click to Activate” Annoyance for Flash Movies in IE

Have you noticed that when using Internet Explorer the Flash content on many websites requires you to click before the content is activated? This is due to an automatic patch which causes IE to do this by default for “active” content i.e. add-on controls/objects.

You might assume this is a security measure, and you would be wrong. You might also assume this is a technical issue, and you would be wrong again. Although it’s hard to believe, this behavior is a deliberate crippling of IE in order to comply with a patent dispute from a company named Eolas. It’s hard to decide who is more to blame for this — Eolas or Microsoft — but one thing’s for sure…the end-user experience has taken a nose-dive with these changes.

There is hope. Geoff Stearns has created SWFObject, a simple Javascript script that enables Flash movies to be embedded with script. Apparently, objects rendered dynamically are not constrained by the patent issue. SWFObject provides a simple and elegant way to insert Flash and circumvent the click annoyance.