Cheers for that, Eolas

So the new version of Internet Explorer is going to be released in early 2004 sans ability to render any “object” or “embed” tags for multimedia content (Background on this story).

There will be (nonstandard) workarounds but it’s not looking too good for any sites that use flash as they will all need recoding in order to work in the next IE. For some of us it could mean a lot of work.

Here’s some responses from the web design community:

Mezzoblue

“He points out that Microsoft, Apple, Real Networks, and Macromedia have all published information on the changes, and Microsoft has gone so far as to release a special preview version of the changed Internet Explorer and publish screenshots of how the new system works.”

Adactio

“An update to Internet Explorer, due for release early next year, will feature a deliberate stumbling block that will be put in the way of users visiting any site with embedded multimedia content e.g. Flash.”

What do I know

“To prepare yourself for the ensuing insanity, solution includes using external javascript files to write (document.write) the object / embed tags into a document instead of directly writing the tags into your code. This means that each and every piece of embedded content (Flash, QuickTime, Java, whatever) would require a unique external javascript file, or a builder-function you pass attributes to to embed your rich content.”

Asterisk

“It doesn’t look like any of the proposed solutions are any good and I’m not holding my breath that any of the players involved will come up with something better.”

Macromedia have set up a useful FAQ about the situation. Apple (QuickTime), Real Audio and Microsoft themselves have information about how to embed multimedia content from now on.

A bit of a nightmare to say the least!

Tags: Web design