Microsoft has (temporarily?) caved on the Eolas patent dispute, and issued a warning to web developers everywhere: the Internet Explorer plugin architecture is going to get an unwelcome downgrade, and you need to change your pages now to avoid causing user experience problems down the road. You’ve got two months. #
4 Responses to “Web Being Downgraded?”
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Isn’t IE a downgrade compared to Firefox anyway? ;)
/me wonders about the timing of this announcement in relation to the calendrical proximity to the first of April. :^)
Bingo.
I’m sure several ‘sudden’ things will happen. I’m waiting for ‘Web 4.01a-rc2’ to be released today.
Don’t be so quick to consider this Microsoft “caving.” It’s quite the opposite: they’re resisting Eolas patent by choosing not to pay up. Yeah, MS has a huge pockets and could easily license the existing approach, but that would just encourage patent trolls like Eolas. Instead, Microsoft is swallowing the potential hard knocks in the user community, at a time when they’re already getting knocked by Firefox, to try and discourage this type of patent blackmail.
I won’t pretend that Microsoft is an angel in all scenarios, but in this case, they’re doing the right thing and not paying the extortion money.