From Microsoft This change is a result of an adverse verdict against Microsoft in a patent infringement lawsuit brought by the University of California and Eolas Technologies. You can read about this case at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/oct03/10-06EOLASpr.asp. Eolas has asserted that its patent covers one specific mechanism used by Web page authors to embed and automatically invoke certain interactive programs. We made this change to IE to respond to this ruling after considering many factors, including impact on the customer and impact on developers. This section describes changes to Internet Explorer's handling of ActiveX controls and Java applets. Developers who build ActiveX controls, Web developers who use ActiveX and Java Applets on their Web sites, and developers who host the Web Browser OC or MSHTML should consult this documentation to understand how the user experience is changing, and also how to modify their pages to manage the user experience for their content. From this site, there are links to Microsoft documentation explaining these changes, a test version of Internet Explorer that shows how it will work when new versions of Windows are released that have this behavior, as well as links to information provided by other companies who produce ActiveX controls or tools. These changes will not be applied to Outlook or Outlook Express. That said, note that in new versions of Outlook and Outlook Express, for security reasons, ActiveX controls and Java Applets are blocked by default in the restricted zone. Early next calendar year, Microsoft expects that new computers and retail purchases of Microsoft Windows XP will have this behavior. Microsoft also expects that new service packs of Windows XP and Internet Explorer will have this behavior starting after that.