Monday, February 21, 2005

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: SmartTag discussion stirs

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: SmartTag discussion stirs: "... 2) SmartTags in IE were evil because they were loaded in a browser (they only were in a beta of IE and were never shipped) by default and they changed everyone's Web experience."

Scoble gets a bit more outspoken (e.g., "I can't speak for any of our competitors (obviously) but if Microsoft ever does any of the above three, I'll be the first to speak out about it in public. Do some research on just how stringent I was against SmartTags. I am NOT going to back down on this issue, even if Bill Gates comes and slaps me upside the head.") but is, imho, wrong about smart tag technology in IE.

The smart tag support planned for IE was designed to make it possible for people using smart tag technology to have similar experiences when using Office apps as well as Office content published to Web pages and viewed through IE. It used the same client-side execution model used in Word and Excel, and wasn't conducive to evil -- unless you explicitly enabled smart tag recognizers and/or action handlers provided by evil sources.

See this article (pdf) for more on my smart stuff perspectives.

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