Microsoft Update versus Internet Explorer 8

Fun implications of designing your software update service as a pseudo-application that is actually an ActiveX plugin (that needs to guarantee the owning web page cannot be closed) include refusing to allow any web page to come forward when the owning web page is one of many tabs in Internet Explorer 8.

It is a little satisfying seeing Microsoft’s chickens come home to roost, but I would much rather they hadn’t made such obvious, Web-hostile choices in the first place.