"Click to activate and use this control" - remove this annoying message!

**UPDATE**  In April 2008 the changes introduced by normal 'Windows Updates' have removed this problem.

But depending on how links were added to the Flash SWF is seems some links no-longer work.
The links in the examples I used below used to work fine, but since the Windows Updates the "click to activate" message has now gone but the links no longer work!!!?

In Internet Explorer (IE)  you may sometimes see a message when hovering over any Macromedia Flash content -
"click to activate and use this control"  - This issue only affects IE, not Firefox etc.

Not only do your visitors see this unnecessary message but  worse still they need to have to 'click twice' to follow any link.
If this is part of your main navigation then it's obviously bad news!

If you hover your mouse over the above image you shouldn't see the
 "click to activate..." message.
Also the hyperlink works with a normal single click.

See the "click to activate..." message when you hover over it!
The hyperlink also needs two clicks to work!

NB. Links in these examples take you to a page showing an anti-virus offer from Freeola.

A simple get-a-round to stop the message and the need for two clicks is to add a small JavaScript after the </object> tag.

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="flashfix.js"></script>

Then create a file named 'flashfix.js' containing the following:

objects = document.getElementsByTagName("object");
for (var i = 0; i < objects.length; i++)
{
objects[i].outerHTML = objects[i].outerHTML;
}

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