[thelist] More Smart Tags

[the head lemur]

> > HTML is very clearly covered by IP, and I would strongly expect
> > that the links (or lack thereof) is part of your expression.

No HTML is not covered by copyright any more that the letters of the
alphabet are, but the resulting website like a book is.

The coercive nature of Smart Tags is the issue. Despite the 'fact', and I
use that term loosely as this is still a beta product, assuming that they
need to be enabled by the end user, is not as important an issue as having
to rewrite your code to disable this. As far as I can see, you will need to
put this on Every page on your sites.

This is another Microsoft example of a 'feature' masquerading as an
enhancement to a standard as the smart tags are written in XML, which is a
version 5.0 and up browser technology.

One solution is a browser downgrade campaign.
"please use a version 5 or earlier browser to view our site"
No I'm not really serious here, but it is an option.

The MY Images are more troubling for different reasons. We all know about
right mousing and saving images. Microsoft is just saving us that right
mouse click by allowing us to print, save and email someone elses graphics.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/misc/mypictures/
mypictures_ovw.asp

Highlights include:

"When the user visits a web site and mouses over an image that meets
particular requirements, the My Pictures hovering toolbar will appear after
one half second, and will disappear immediately after the user moves the
cursor off the image. The hovering toolbar has three to four buttons
depending upon the browser client and user operating system. They are Save
this image, Print this image, Send this image in an e-mail, and Open My
Pictures folder."

'Images that are greater than 130 pixels wide by 130 pixels high'

no sending obnoxious banner ads back to the company without doing it the old
fashioned way.

This is a field ripe for litigation as so many sites use graphics as
branding devices, and in a lot of cases companies have registered these
images as trademarks.

They say that it is not intended for compay or webpage logos, but they don't
discuss copyright issues.

Here again they offer another piece of code to disable this "feature" and
again you must add it to every page.

Well writing standards compliant code is out the window again.
Both of these tags as of this writing. require you to code microsofts way.

and that sucks!