Blog - Cyber mess

Cyber mess

Last month Microsoft announced that they will release a new version of Internet Explorer next year, to be shipped with new XP machines. No new features but an important one removed: no more automatic rendering of media within the browser using an external application, or in other words, no more automatic plug-ins (Flash, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, etc.).
The keyword here is "automatic", because plug-ins will still be supported, but the user will be required to hit a key for every plug-in shown, unless a patch is applied to the Web page in question.

The reason for the feature removal is that Microsoft was sued by Eolas, a company who claims owning a patent relating to plug-ins.

Now the big news is that, just a few days ago, the World Wide Web Consortium's director Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web) is backing Microsoft regarding this case, since they think that the patent is invalid because plug-ins existed before thhe patent was registered.

Read more about this here:
W3C Press Release: World Wide Web Consortium Presents the US Patent Office with Evidence Invalidating Eolas Patent
News: Web Inventor Backs Microsoft (PC World)

On November 14, I will be going to W3C Day Japan 2003, an event at which Tim Berners-Lee will speak about Semantic Web. Many other important faces of the W3C will be speaking about new technologies.

Posted on November 1, 2003 at 12:18 | Tweet |

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