Microsoft held a
seminar today for technical journalists at their Redmond
campus to discuss features in an upcoming build of Internet Explorer 4.0.
The company publicly discussed some features for the first time, including
a "package management" feature that allows IS managers to transmit and
manage applications across a network. Microsoft also clearly labeled
Marimba, makers of Castanet, as the company they are aiming to beat.
Microsoft is including the package management feature in the next version
of their Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which will ship with IE 4 in the next
public beta, due in July. Using this system, IS managers will be able to
install Java and ActiveX applications on users' computers and automatically
update older versions of applications all at once. In the past, this sort
of activity required that these apps be installed on each machine, one at
a time.
Other new IE 4 features that were demoed include an improved "customize
this folder" Wizard, updated toolbars, and a more customizable interface.
Using Channel Definition Format (CDF) technology, Web sites will be able to
schedule the delivery of push content to users. Unlike Castanet, the CDF
software will not require a specialized server to accomplish this.
During the seminar, Microsoft emphasized that CDF and Dynamic HTML have
"momentum," which is usually the death knell for any technology (as any
OS/2 or PowerPC proponent will tell you). "Dynamic HTML is the power to
build real apps using HTML," said Michael Wallent, another program manager
at Microsoft.
CDF and Dynamic HTML have been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) for approval as Internet standards. Microsoft also announced that
FrontPage98--due late this year--will produce CDF and Dynamic HTML Web
pages as will the next version of Visual InterDev, due in 1998. Numerous
third party companies also announced support for these technologies today,
including Allaire Corp., Bluestone Inc., Elemental Software Inc.,
ExperTelligence Inc., Pictorius Inc. and SoftQuad Inc. Borland, Macromedia,
and Powersoft have already announced support for Dynamic HTML and CDF.
"SoftQuad is pleased to have incorporated support for dynamic HTML into our
upcoming release of HoTMetaL PRO 4.0," said Lauren Wood, technical product
manager for SoftQuad and chair of the W3C Document Object Model Working
Group. "SoftQuad is a believer in standards-based technologies, and we
support the Document Object Model as an enabling technology for the
development and delivery of structured documents across the Web and
corporate intranets."
Register
