"Click to Activate" ActiveX Controls Going Bye-Bye from IE

Are you as annoyed by some of the ActiveX controls you find on certain web pages, that give you a "Click to activate and use this control" message as many are? It's soon to disappear.

The issue first started with a dispute between Microsoft and Eolas Technology. Because of this, in April 2006, Microsoft made a modification to Internet Explorer. The message appeared on ActiveX controls that were directly embedded in HTML, rather than being injected via JavaScript.

Of course, a web developer could get away from this with a relatively simple workaround, but you still saw the message on some sites.

In August of this year, Microsoft and Eolas made nice, with a undisclosed settlement. Microsoft has indicated that starting next month, with a preview release called the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview via the Microsoft Download Center, they'll start to roll out the change.

The next pre-release versions of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 will get the change, and finally it'll be put into the Internet Explorer Cumulative Update in April 2008 via Windows Update.

Just think. for those of you who have experienced this, you could have avoided it with Firefox (hint, hint).