EOLAS ruling and WBT

I have been investigating, for the last few days, the potential issues that the EOLAS patent ruling and Microsoft's change to Internet Explorer will have on browser viewed training content. So far not much has happened because the update has been optional but April 11 it is scheduled be pushed out as a required update along with security updates (with apparently a separate patch that provides the ability to remove the EOLAS changes until June when they will become mandatory).

From my tests there is no effect on Microsoft Producer generated output, and the effect on Toolbook 2004 SP3 generated output is minimized potentially to vector graphics (and even there the actual potentially observable problems with IE6 seem not to manifest).  This thanks to anticipatory work by SumTotal Systems Toolbook development group. Flash and Java embedded in a web page unless coded using Microsoft's proposed workaround strategy will have an annoying "Click to activate.." tool tip affecting user experience but probably no other ill effects.

Tests with IE7 betas seems though have the annoying "Click to activate ..." tool tip message symptomatic of the changes made for EOLAS though.

I am crossing my fingers that problems will be minimal. Microsoft has published a strategy that website developers can use to avoid the annoying "Click to activate ..." and if website owners have been vigilant (not likely though) they will have already taken steps to avoid the annoyance.

P.S.(April 20) -- it turns out that SumTotal Systems wasn't as prepared as I was lead to believe. Toolbook generated lessons do indeed have a problem with Flash and media players.