ActiveX For All: Browsers Makers Create Alternative To IE API Exclusives

While enterprises have been solidly resisting all of the negative press and warnings that have been appearing in the last few days about Microsoft Internet Explorer security risks, many small companies and individual users have indeed turned off their IE while happily adopting FireFox, Netscape, Opera, Safari or one other of the many free browsing alternatives available out there. The problem though is far from being solved by simply abandoning IE, as some critical applications (in my case I can think of at least two very important applications I use online) rely specifically on IE unique API and ActiveX controls to make their magic work. For example, using Movable Type, one of the more popular small content management system using by independent publishers, it's a pain without IE as all of the basic formatting buttons do not work in oter browsers. The revolutionary 3D immersive collaborative spaces created by SmartMeeting.com and Tixeo.com aren't usable at all unless you use Microsoft IE. But finally somebody, somewhere has taken good action to change the course of this sad state of things. Here's the news: "A group of Web browser makers has banded together to make software plug-ins as functional in their own browsers as in Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer browser. The Mozilla Foundation, Opera Software ASA and Apple Computer Inc. announced earlier this week that they have developed an extension to a plug-in API that serves as an alternative to IE's method of using ActiveX for plug-in scripting. ...The new extension, unveiled Wednesday, provides a unified approach for developing and running scriptable plug-ins across browsers from Mozilla, Opera and Apple... Browsers should begin shipping with the extension by the fall, and Mozilla plans to begin including in the next few weeks in its nightly builds for developers...further and more important: The updated Netscape Plug-In API is based on Web standards and is being offered in an open-source licensing model.