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Microsoft To Delay IE "Smart Tags" Release
Erbo writes: "CNET reports that Microsoft has decided to drop Smart Tags from Internet Explorer 6.0, the version that will be packaged with Windows XP. They may be resurrected later, though, so don't yank those META tags out of your pages yet. Smart Tags are still part of Office XP, too."
Thank you.
It could equally well be said that if you use Netscape on Linux to view a page that the designer laid out in Internet Explorer on a Mac, you're not viewing the page as the author intended.
Or, for example, if you use one of the many utilities that strips out banner ads.
Get over it! You know why HTML has header tags to describe headings, why we have title, and body, and ordered lists and all that other stuff? It's because you say what it is, and it's up to the client to decide how it looks. This is how it was back in 1994! And And Netscape had their "What's Related" (I don't remember the exact name) facility that could take you to other pages that might be relevant to what you're doing.
If there's a way to switch your "smart tags" provider to someone other than MSFT, then there's whole new business opportunity right there.
Honestly, Microsoft are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Ask yourself, honestly, if this were a funky new feature in KDE, would you be as bitter?
The problem with this is that the "supplement" comes from the MS point of view.
Think about a smarttag that links the phrase "buy tickets" to a MS-sponsored ticket seller.
Suppose I have a document with the following line:
"Well, we tried to buy tickets for the show at the theatre, but they were sold out. Luckily, we were still able to buy tickets for the movie through a small online retailer known as [booga]" ([] denoting a link).
MS changes that to:
"Well, we tried to [buy tickets] for the show at the theatre, but they were sold out. Luckily, we were still able to [buy tickets] for the movie through a small online retailer known as [booga]" ([] denoting a link).
...with the words "buy tickets" linked to THEIR choice of ticket-seller, when you were obviously trying to point people to a different one.
Granny isn't going to understand the difference between smarttags and regular links. She will follow the "buy tickets" link, and not realize that you, as the author, had no intention of sending her there.
That's the problem here. Ignorant or un-informed people who don't understand the technology, and MS using their dominance in the browser market to change the web into the image THEY want to project, not the one that the authors of the content want to project.
Microsoft and trademark lawsuits
In two words... tradmark violations.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
...and maybe someone else has posted this thought, because it's a logical extension (or inversion?) of the "smart tags" idea. What if Microsoft turned this idea around, and also invented "untags", that would take hyperlinks pointing to competitor's web sites and "unlink" them? For example, their browser could turn
<a href="http://redhat.com">Redhat</a>
into plain old
Redhat
Would even Microsoft be arrogant and audacious enough to try to get away with this? I hope we don't find out. This Orwellian notion of on-the-fly content modification - "for the benefit of the user" - just scares the stuffing out of me!
Where do you want to stay today?
--Jim
gTags uses the same XML schema as Microsoft Smart Tags. I've added the ability to create a Default tag which can optionally be used to "match" selected words that don't match any other (specific) tags.
I guess the main difference between gTags and Microsoft Smart Tags is that the user has to actively choose what they want to do.
gTags is alpha software, but seems to work well enough. Suggestions and contributions are welcome. Read more about gTags here.
.. would it not be possible to ship Apache with a default-setting that automatically sends the "stop smart-tags"-setting with all loads of the websites on the server.
Then it could be turned on or off individually for each virtualhost.
Of course.. this is not the way it should operate, there should be an "opt in"-tag instead of a "opt out"-tag.
The linked site has something that Slashdot has never provided: a screen shot of Internet Explorer 6 with Smart Tags enabled. Although the site presumably contains many buzzwords (XML, SOAP, and even "Smart Tags") only one word is actually given the dreaded purple underline. That word? "Microsoft."
The suggested links aren't even as blatantly pro-Microsoft as you might think. It looks like they're the same content you could get about any company from any financial news site (news for MSFT, report for MSFT, chart for MSFT, etc.) and an option to search the web for the company name. In fact, when you search for "Microsoft" on MSN, there are still anti-Microsoft pages linked after the more relevant ones. (Check out link #25. Most people searching for just "Microsoft" aren't looking for MS-bashing, either.)
Please, stop overreacting until you've actually seen what Smart Tags do. The article cautions that Smart Tags are still in Office XP. Those are safer still: the usual company stock-price import facilities, as well as the option to automagically import addresses from your Address Book. That makes life simpler when you're typing a letter.
No, I'm not a Microsoft supporter or shareholder, but the constant MS-bashing is completely uncalled for. (Notice also how I did not use "Micro$oft", "M$", "Microsquish", or any other stupid manglings in my write-up here.)
For more information, click here.
Didja know that to add Smart Tags on someone's system you just have to put in some properly formattted XML at the beginning of your web page? So say you "accidentally" surf to some porn site with this crap in it, now everytime you type a document in Word XP the word "the" is underlined in purple with a link to the porn site only a click away.
This is an egregious example, but not *too* egregious. It's a good thing that MS is taking these out of IE6, which otherwise looks to be a fairly decent browser. (Still pulling for Mozilla, but increasingly skeptical... <sigh>.)
- Rev.There was nothing wrong with the technology itself (something most people don't seem to realize), just the potential for abuse by Microsoft (who doesn't have a great track record).
What would have been nice is if the smart tag technology was left in the browser but either left disabled, or even better, left enabled but with no default filter DLLs. That would have given the USER the power to control what they wanted and not Microsoft.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Wrong. Smart tags are available from many different places. They are just an ActiveX DLL that conforms to a certain interface.
Check out www.officesmarttags.com for the list of companys already providing tags. If you want even more information go to msdn.microsoft.com and you'll find out that you can write your own Smart Tag filter in about 10 minutes with VB.
Microsoft no more controlled smart tag content than they controlled where you surf in your browser. Sure they put a lot of default links in your Favorites menu, but it didn't stop you getting to Slashdot did it?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
You forget that copyright only applies if the user republishes the work that they annotated with the smart tags of THEIR choice. Because this is not happening you don't have a legal leg to stand on.
Do you honestly think LexisNexus would be providing a smart tag filter if there was a legal problem with them? Perhaps you should get a little informed before you go off with bizzare schemes designed to infringe on a user's rights with published material.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The smart tags in Office XP are IDENTICAL to the smart tags that were going to be in IE6. If you even bothered to do just a little research on msdn.microsoft.com you would have found this out very quickly.
Smart Tags were simply provided by a filter DLL and could do pretty much anything - the default ones in Office XP just link names to your contact list and so on, but you can enable the ones that link 'MSFT' to investor.msn.com for stock quotes and the like.
The Smart Tag technology was a great idea. People want to be able to enrich their web surfing - I for one wouldn't mind having a Slashdot tag enabled that provided an option for me to check out related stories on Slashdot - but the thing is most people didn't even understand what Smart Tags were (as evidenced by your post). It would have been good if MS left these in the browser but with NO filters enabled by default. That way a clued in user could simply enable the ones they wanted and browse the web the way they wanted to.
When it comes down to it, so long as it is the user is in control of what they view there can be no complaint from web publishers. Users have the right to render web pages in whatever way they feel, and if that includes user specified smart tags then I think more power to users is a good thing.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
How to live with smart tags?
,Netscape Navigator 4.72 or Opera5 (the code the copyright holde delivered and nothing else). This means there is to be no advertising linked to the content of the page as provided by the copyright holder. The use of easily identifiable advertising that is not linked to the content of the page shown (as currently in Opera5 add sponsored mode) is allowed.
You have got a succesfull site with lots of page hits. You supply your visitors with a lot of material that is copyrighted (copyright owned by you, otherwise you have to make arrangments.). You supply webpages and Microsoft Office documents.
You don't oppose innovation (and you don't feel like changing your server settings for every possible internet product that gets released), so you will not be turning of smart tags in your webserver.
Get a copy of IE6 that has smarttags active and send it to the independent party mentioned in the terms of use. Get a copy of office software using smarttags and send them to the independent party for checking how it works with your copyrighted material.
You add a new part to the terms of use of your website:
The reuse of copyrighted material available on this website is prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder (this info should be there now).
If you wish to change the representation of the copyrighted material you find on this website, a fee has to be payed by the organistion or company that gets a benefit out of the alterations. The intended representation is as seen in IE5
***Fees for Non Commercial change in representation.***
The insertion of a non-commercial (informative) link to a company or organisation that doesn't sell (or which parent company or parent organisation does'nt sell) any product costs $ 10.000 per 3 months. The price for a click through is $ 0.1. To use this tarrif ($ 0.1 per click through) you have to provide the owner of this site every 3 months (before april 15, juli 15, oktober 15 of each year) a list of click through received from changed representations of copyrighted material. If no such information is provided to the owner of the copyrighted materials a fixed amount of $ 10.000 per 3 months has to be payed to the owner of the copyrighted material provided here. THe total maximum cost of this arrangement will thus be $ 20.000 per 3 months.
***Fees for Commercial change in representation.***
The insertion of a commercial link to a company or organisation that does sell (or which parent company or parent organisation does sell) any product costs $ 20.000 per month. The price for a click through is $ 1. To use this tarrif (1 per click through) you have to provide the owner of this site every month (before the 15th of the next month) a list of click through received from changed representations of copyrighted material. If no such information is provided to the owner of the copyrighted materials a fixed amount of 20.000 per month has to be payed to the owner of the copyrighted material provided here.
The use of changed representations by commercial and non-commercial companies and organisations will be checked by an independent party. Every month this party will check whether changed representations of the copyrighted material are still being used for commercial or non commercial reasons. This independent party wil search for this use and will click on links to establish an unidentified number of click throughs to make sure the information sent to the copyright holder, by the organisations making use of changed representations, contains the right information. These click throughs will not be charged.
Failure to meet these terms of use will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
P.S. These terms of use should get you some distance. But to get it realy going, you have to check with a lawyer to make sure this works as intended and secondly, you need an independent party to check your website/material with IE6 or office XP. Then wait for the checks to arrive.
P.P.S. This system can be used in every country of the world. So if its one down, 240 left to go.
P.P.S. You didn't ask for them to change your copyrighted material did you?
Is this a new MS tactic for avoiding the DOJ? Announce something and see how much public outcry there is before deciding whether to back off it or not? It sure is cheaper than fighting the gov't directly in court and finding out the hard way.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
The smart tags for IE 6.0, on the other hand, were considerably more insidious. Walt Mossberg's WSJ column today makes the argument that Microsoft has a responsibility as the creator of the most used browser to faithfully reproduce the original web page author's intent when their browser displays a page. Of course, he doesn't mention the fact that ignoring published standards has the same effect--not that Microsoft would ever do that.
~=Keelor
Microsoft, in their wisdom, have devoloped a feature we call "DumbTags" that adds Microsoft chosen links to your pages based on keywords. They have thoughtfully added an opt-out feature, and you can be protected from having your readership redirected by your friends in Redmond if you merely manually update every page and script on your site to include this meta tag:
<META NAME="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" CONTENT="TRUE">
There are a number of valid reasons to reject this opt-out model, and this page explores the possibility of engineering DumbTag free swaths of the internet.Suggestions
Lets consider how DumbTags might be made opt-in through technological means.
Perl: Change the HTML generation modules such as CGI.pm to automatically add the protection unless the meta tag is defined.
PHP: Add a preprocessing phase where the protective tag is automatically inserted into head blocks?
Web Servers, Proxy Servers: addition of a default filter that adds the protective meta tag automatically to pages unless overridden. Server users could of course turn off this feature...
Tools
Automated Removal: We are looking for links to programs that can traverse directories and automatically update static HTML files with protection.
Advocacy
What you can do to stop DumbTags:
Please send feedback, suggestions, and comments to shaun@atrium.com.
From www.atrium.com/dumbtags.html
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. [H.S.T.]
But they're staying in Office XP, yet not in IE6? I thought Office XP used the IE component for rendering HTML?
No, silly! That would mean that IE and Windows were 'seamlessly integrated' and that Windows wouldn't function properly without IE and Microsoft would be forced to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows...
wait a minute...seems there is something a little funny about that, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Nope, clippy is supplied with XP.
He's just off by default.
Microsoft is however concerned about whether or not they are able to sell their products. In my company (big bank) management had allready decided to update our entire website so it couldn't be smart-tagged. Seems our management would have a problem with the fact Microsoft links every occurance of the words 'bank', 'loan', etc. to one of our competitors. Not that we mind advertisements. We just mind other banks advertising on our site. If other companies have reacted the same (as can be expected) and word of this has gotten out to Microsoft, it's no wonder they've reverted their decision. It'll make sure they'll sell more, so removing the Smart Tags is a Smart Move(tm).
The cynic in me sees a strange result of this decision: if Microsoft is able to embed Smart Tags in their OS, but leave it out of their browser, then perhaps the OS and the browser are not one and the same, contrary to Microsoft's defense in the Monopoly case. Just a thought.
I have a photographic memory for numbers. I know almost a hundred of them.
Microsoft
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
According to MS, that is the correct META tag. The relevant link to Microsoft's site is: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/preview/smartt ags/default.asp
Of course, what they're really doing is secretly re-writing the smart tag code so that the META tag doesn't work. Then they'll sneak it out in a "service pack" for IE 6. Yeah, that's it!
How's that? Informative AND a parnoid flame, all in one post!
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
How about, to preserve the integrity of an author's design? Smart Tags are a way for an outside agency to modify my pages on the fly, in ways I do not approve of. Why should I, or any author, surrender that control? How can it possibly be good for a third party to intervene between me and my readers?
I think that there should be a web page designed by the open source community and copyrighted. Then when people view it with MS Smart Tag enabled browsers and tags start popping up that point to other sites, we can sue them for copyright violation. Or file some suits that claim that their use of smart tags violates the look and feel of our web design.
I mean, sure you can opt out of it. But that's like saying that you can opt out of junk mail or telephone solicitiors. You shouldn't *HAVE* to opt out. It should be an opt-in if you want Smart Tags to be able to deface...er...modify the appearance of your page. Especially since a cleverly designed smart tag could easily completely change the idea, purpose, or concept that you are trying to get aross to your page viewers.
Most commercial web sites (in order to protect their integrity) will notify you if a link that they provide leads to another web site (and that they don't control or necessarily even endorse what is written there). They don't want to create even the impression that they support everything that they link to. How can you combat that with Smart Tags? Put a disclaimer at the top of your page saying that any link on your page probably goes somewhere that you didn't intend it to, nor want it to, nor do you control the content of the site linked to or even your own site? Once again, you can opt out. But if MS really believes that this is in the users' and the content providers' best interests, then they will make sure that it ISN'T the default and make sure that it IS opt-in only. Then let the market judge it on it's merits.
Say "NO!" to tax money for religious groups.
Wouldn't the better method to block it be to modify Apache to automatically include the relevant statements on all web pages? After all, if MS wants to use its position as the dominant browser to instigate this, its only fitting to use the dominant web server to block it.