Microsoft Corp has apparently told developers that parts of its Chromeffects technology will ship with its Internet Explorer 5 browser and with the next release of its desktop operating system, Windows 2000 Professional. DirectAnimation, DXTransform and HTML+TIME are to be included in a technology update, but the 56 XML tags which form the core of Chromeffects will not ship until after Windows 2000 has been released. That’s a problem as far as uptake is concerned, as the absence of the XML tags means developers will have to go through a layer of Java programming in Chromeffects content before it will run on DirectAnimation. The company dealt the technology a blow in November, when it announced that the Christmas shipping date from Chromeffects had slipped. Developers had stayed away in droves, saying they wanted more support for industry standards like the document object model (DOM). At a panel discussion held by the San Francisco Association of Internet Professionals (SF-AIP) earlier this week, Microsoft’s backdown over Chromeffects was applauded as a sensitive response to developer concerns. How ironic, then, that the most open part of Chromeffects, the XML tags, will be the last to see the light of day.
