Apparently, Microsoft lost a case in court over a patent issue, which means that they can no longer embed active-x content directly in the browser (Internet Explorer), without it coming at a cost to the user/developer.
An update to Windows was issued from Microsoft a few days ago, and these changes took (and are still taking) effect immediately after install. If you're using Windows software and you are set to receive automatic updates, or have manually installed Windows updates recently and are an Internet Explorer user, then you will know about this already. And it may be confusing you, so let me go on to explain.
Anyone using Internet Explorer who has the update will have to click the content (in case of flash) at least once to "activate it." From there on in, the end user will notice nothing different, after clicking once on each piece of embedded content.
However, those who're still using Internet Explorer will have to do this for every major active-x application that they come across, at every visit. So, if you're thinking of spending some time in the Portal and you're still using Internet Explorer on a Windows based machine, then you're going to have to do a lot of additional clicking in order for the animations to "work" and in order for you to be able to vote on the content that you view.
There are a couple of workarounds from both the users' perspective and from our perspective (the scripting from our side of things). If you're still using Internet Explorer as your primary web browser, then please click here to see workarounds.
Alternatively, get yourself a copy of Firefox and save yourself the hassle.
The scripting on our side of things will take longer to sort out than you guys who're using Internet Explorer can work through things, because there's so much flash content throughout the site.
Anyone who has updated Windows recently, or who are set to receive automatic downloads and have them installed are going to be affected by this at some point.
Thanks to Shawn for drawing my attention to this.
By the way, I got a call from Tom saying that the site was down this morning. I swear he's bionic. I mean, who gets up to go to an office at gone 4am? Many European users noticed this outage, but it was nothing to do with them being in Europe, just the time that they were up. Service resumed shortly after the call, most likely down to Tim, who would have called the service provider.
If you haven't already read it, read Tom's news about Stagknight!