Activation Problem - Background Details
Why have Flash animations, Java applets and other ActiveX controls on my web pages started displaying the message "Click to activate and use this control" in Internet Explorer recently?
Control Activation Problem Description
This message appears because Microsoft has been sued and lost a law suit in the Internet Explorer browser software in regard to embedded controls/applets. In order to not have to pay millions of dollars in licensing fees, Microsoft have changed the behavior of the Internet Explorer browser to require an activation click on the embedded control before a visitor is allowed to interact with the applet.
Microsoft has applied this patch as a mandatory upgrade for Internet Explorer 6.0 that was released early April 2006 and this affects ActiveX controls, Flash animations and Java applets - a significant and annoying change for users, especially where these elements are used for web site navigation. IE shows a tooltip when you hover over the control that says "Click to activate and use this control". The user then has to click once to activate and then again to press a button or click a link displayed by the Flash or Java applet.
Solution to the problem
There is a workaround to this problem involving an external javascript include, which is exempt from the patent because it involves another layer between the embedded control and the browser.
This website makes two types of fixes available for webmasters, one involves one additional line at the end of your HTML source and works well for most flash animations but has problems with ActiveX objects or Java Applets. The other fix wraps some tags around each embedded object on a page, and then a small script that is external to the source file is included at the bottom of the file. This second "per object" fix works well for Flash animations, ActiveX controls (eg Windows Media Player) and Java applets. Both fixes can be applied by the automatic fix tool available on this site.
http://www.ediy.co.nz/internet-explorer-flash-applet-activation-fix-xidc19237.html
Cool Live example