If you have Internet Explorer 7 or above installed on your computer you may notice sites using flash that worked fine previously now have a "Click to activate and use this control" tag that pops up over flash components. This is because in 2004 Microsoft lost a lawsuit to Eolas Technologies, the people responsible for creating programming and even holds a patent for how interactive things like java, flash and movies are displayed on a website. This is true for any browser. Specifically "Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document"
Microsoft released a work around to fix this problem, that does not effect the patent. The downside is it involves additional work for the owner of the website to embed content in Internet Explorer.
The solution is simple enough to understand, instead of seamlessly interacting with the embedded object, you now have to activate it first to use it. Please understand this is only true for interacting with embedded objects. If you have a flash file on your site the file will still play, but you will have to click it first to interact with the embedded object.
The work around for flash on websites is below.
You will need to place these 2 files on your server, I have them saved into a scripts folder for usability.
Right click and "Save Target As" AC_RunActiveContent.js AC_ActiveX.js
Place the following 2 lines of code in your head
<script src="/Scripts/AC_RunActiveContent.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/Scripts/AC_ActiveX.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Then for your flash code on your site you will need something like this to call your new code. Obviously flash_file needs to be changed to match your file name, same with your width, height and background color.
<script type="text/javascript">
AC_FL_RunContent( 'codebase','http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0','width','450','height','363','src','/flash_file','quality','high','pluginspage','http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer','movie','/flash_file' ); //end AC code
</script><noscript>
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" width="450" height="363" id="flash_file" align="middle">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="/flash_file.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><embed src="/hockey_match.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="450" height="363" name="flash_file" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object></noscript>
