Eolas, Flash and the Casual Games on the PSP
May 9th, 2006, By Duncan Gough
Microsoft has responded to the Eolas patent regarding interactive content in its web browser by releasing a patch that prevents ActiveX controls from loading, much like the popular FireFox FlashBlock extension.
Macromedia have published an overview showing how this affects the user experience, including this demonstration of the patch in action. Microsoft have also published this guide to running ActiveX controls, like Flash, with the need for user intervention. More here and here.
If you’ve been a good web developer and updated your site, tested it and run Windows Update to get in sync with your casual game playing audience, well done! If you’re a PSP owner who’s downloaded the new patch to see what it’s like to play flash games on your sexy little device, bad news, eh? That’s right, the PSP browser chokes on dynamically written object/embed tags, meaning no flash games for you, not easily anyway. Bah, humbug. Why is everything so complicated?