The Motive Web Design Glossary
smart tags
For the release of Windows XP, Microsoft is considering a feature that would add contextual hyperlinks to its Office suite of applications."Smart tags" would be added to words/phrases in documents created or viewed using these programs.
Increasing productivity
For example when editing a document in Word (along with spelling and grammar checking) Microsoft would suggest a number of actions.
Clicking the action box above "seaside" would provide a pop-up menu offering to; link to a travel site, launch your aquarium screen saver or perhaps insert a picture of a plastic bucket-and-spade :)
Infringing copyright?
Implementation of the feature in Microsoft's Explorer browser would add smart tag link to webpage content. This has given rise to concern relating to issues of copyright.
If you consider hyperlinks as "footnotes" to the main text, in effect, smart tags would be adding viewpoints not sanctioned by the author.
Microsoft claim that smart tags would remedy the *issue* of sites that are 'under-linked'. An unfortunate byproduct, is that they may also alter the page's meaning.
Opting-out
Microsoft responded by providing a meta tag to prevent smart tags from being displayed;
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
However, before you rush out and add this tag to every page on your site, the public furore has also resulted in Microsoft removing smart tags from IE 6.0, though they will still be available in other Office XP programs.
References and further reading
- Microsoft
Office XP (Microsoft)
1. Launch the (Flash) demo
2. Select 'Simplifying Productivity'
3. Click on square number 2 for smart tags example - Microsoft
tries to get smart
A wry example of what the implementation of smart tags could have done to your web content. - Much
ado about smart tags
Extended technical discussion/opinion piece. - What is IntelliTXT? (Vibrant Media)
…a third-party technology created and distributed through Vibrant Media Incorporated, developed to locate keywords & phrases found within text and link them to relevant commercial information.
(sound familiar?)
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