Parrying Microsoft Corp.'s promise of browser-desktop integration in
Windows 98, Netscape
Communications Corp. today announced its next-generation Web client
technology.
Code-named Aurora, the software integrates information from multiple
sources, including the
Web and the desktop, and presents it within the context of the Web browser
client.
Aurora uses a data description framework called RDF (Resource Description
Framework),
which Netscape has proposed as a standard to the World Wide Web
Consortium. RDF
provides a format for describing "metadata" -- information about how
content is organized.
At a keynote address in San Francisco, Netscape demonstrated how a user
with Netscape
Communicator and Aurora could browse Web sites, local and networked file
directories, push
channels, and bookmark lists. Users could then even view files without
having to leave the
browser.
Netscape said Aurora would ship in the first half of 1998 as an add-on to
Communicator, the
company's suite of Internet access tools.
--The eyes are the whores of the senses, they'll go to anything. Keith Richards
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>