Here's a news item. I don't recall whether we've had this discussion on
this list, but Microsoft intended to put "smart tags" in IE 6, so that
certain words or phrases would have these attached to them. Clicking on
them would bring up a drop down menu of related links. It would not be
something built into the HTML, but part of IE's internal plumbing. The
problem, of course, is that if you had a smart link attached to, say,
the word "Linux" on a site, Microsoft could provide a set of links to
anti-Linux sites. Using your imagination, I'm sure you can figure out
what other kinds of interesting things they could do with this. And
since IE has now virtually taken over the browser market on Windows,
everyone running the new version would be a captive audience.
My wife stirred up some s**t recently on the HTML Writers Guild list by
bringing this up. The list went ballistic for a while, as web people
used _their_ imaginations.
In any case, it appears Microsoft thought better of the idea, and has
now backed down. (They'll bring it up again, don't worry.) Below is the
original link my wife sent me. The story is also echoed on today's
Slashdot.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/593601.asp#BODY
Paul
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