It looks like the extra code that Apple supplies when creating links with the iTMS Link Maker is causing pop-ups to appear in some browsers. This is the text of an e-mail I got tonight, and the response I gave. Has anyone else seen this happening, or are there any other ideas of what might be going on? Are new updated versions of IE that have been patched due to the Eolas lawsuit already in the wild?
On Saturday, Oct 18, 2003, at 19:14 US/Pacific, Owen van Dijk wrote:
Hello Michael,
Through a link I stumbled on your weblog. Suddenly I got a popup saying if wanted to install the “iTunes detector” from Apple. I have never heard of such a plugin, not on a PC ( I use windows xp, ie6 ) and not on a mac ( I am also the lucky owner of a powerbook 12\” :) ) could you please explain what this plugin does or why it is embedded in your site?
Wow. Good question.
First off — I’m really sorry about a pop-up showing up! I had no idea that would happen (and, to be entirely honest, I’m not entirely sure why it happened…but I can guess).
With Apple’s release of iTunes for the PC and the revamping of the iTunes Music Store, they’ve made it easier to link directly to items inside the iTunes Music Store. There are two ways of doing this — either with a simple link (like INXS Need You Tonight), or with a more complex link that’s generated using their iTunes Link Maker.
When you create a link with the iTunes Link Maker, it generates two snippets of code — one for the link itself, and one to put in the head of your html page. According to Apple, “The first text box on this page contains code to include in the HEAD section of your HTML (once per page) to detect if iTunes is present or not. This will cause your links to behave intelligently if iTunes is not installed on the user’s computer.” Since I added a link to the iTMS at the bottom of my page (down with the Amazon links), I also added that snippet to the page.
My guess is that that’s what causing the popup to show up on your browser. I’m not entirely sure why you’re getting a popup asking for confirmation, unless it is related to the recent changes being made in IE due to the Eolas patent suit against Microsoft (though I wasn’t aware that they’d actually started distributing changed versions of IE yet).
In either case, that’s something that I don’t want my visitors to have to deal with, so I’ll be taking that code out of there. Thanks much for letting me know about it!
The offending code has been removed from my pages, along with the iTMS link that I had in the ad box at the bottom of the pages. Bummer, but as long as the simple style of linking works, I’ll be able to play with it whenever I want to.
Hey Michael,
Thnx for the reply. The pop-up that shows is exactly like the one you get when installing the Flash Player:
but then for the “iTunes detector” signed and distributed by Apple Inc. Nothing really special, i just clicked OK and everything installed flawless. I remember it inserts also a link to a javascript file, residing on Apple’s server, and i did a little check yesterday to see what’s in there. It was just a simple detection-code to see if i got the plugin installed, too bad you removed the link, don’t have the code here anymore. I never made the link to the EOLAS pattern though, however might be something interesting to look at, mainly to see why Apple is not using their own methods to embed this plugin. Another interesting thing to note is that i DO have iTunes installed for Windows! So apparantly, the installer does not install this plugin in the browser.
Strange indeed. :)
MT stripped the image from my previous post:
I have had the iTunes Detector pop up on a couple of other blogs. It may be harmless, but it is very annyoing because it pops up everytime you click a link on the site. I thought maybe it is one of those active x controls that will do a drive by download if someone has their browser security settings low.
hey do you guys have the old code for the javascript insert. i can’t seem to find is anywhere…
thanks