Ian Hixie discusses the state of 'the' WHAT (well worth reading):

... As Joel points out, though, Microsoft's moves after they realised their mistake with IE have been harder to understand. I would have thought the solution most likely to succeed would have been to extend IE in ways that made it into a better application deployment platform. Eventually, this could have turned IE into the OS, either natively (making the next version of Windows basically be IE), or by selling IE with versions for all operating systems. This would have had several advantages: ... [via Hixie's Natural Log]

He muses that "They actually did start down that road. IE6 has support for a technology that Microsoft stopped advertising at the same time as they stopped developing IE, namely HTAs, short for HTML Applications" - but he doesn't say that HTAs are a subset of Zeepe. It is possible that HTAs were derived from Zeepe's pre-cursor (by name) WPM because WPM is referenced by MS in their web applications patent.

And it heartens me greatly to see:

"The problem with the browser today is that applications based in the browser are constrained to nightmarish UI idioms and a severe lack of polish stemming from the fact that the platform was not really developed as a platform, and that no real progress has been made on this path for several years."

We've been trying to make progress, it remains a question as to whether developers really care, or whether users really care. What is clear is that some people need to see iMunch or any of the Zeepe samples to get out of this:

the user experience of any app running in a web browser is crippled [via Daring Fireball]

view. The web browser may be crippled but, IMHO, DHTML is anything but cripppled.

Mozilla Foundation press release on a new plug-in architecture, also supported by Macromedia, Apple, Sun, Opera, "...to extend the Netscape Plugin Application Program Interface in a manner that allows greater interactivity with plugins such as Flash, Shockwave, QuickTime and Java, resulting in a richer, more interactive web." [via Scripting News]

Something else to look into, maybe has implications for Neptune.

PayPal goes XML Web Services and releases SDK !.  

Well, I've always liked the PayPal thing. Fast, easy online payment and quite secure (if you know what you're doing).
The PayPal Web Services comprise of 4 informational and transactional API's enabling developers to create e-commerce applications that integrate with the PayPal platform. The cool thing is that they seem to share a common API structure with eBay's Web services offerings. See http://developer.paypal.com

Ok, onto my coding machine, fire up VS.net and start coding the next demo...
Any customer outthere that has Internet access while I demo this thing ?

 [via Microsoft WebBlogs]

Something to look into.

He [DG: Mark Thompson] added: "Creating a fully digital Britain is a public challenge the BBC must help to lead. It is a Britain from which the BBC, and only the BBC, can ensure no-one is excluded."

 [via BBC NEWS | Entertainment | BBC outlines 'radical' manifesto]

What rubbish. Or is (only) the BBC going to start providing broadband connections to all of us excluded from the digital revolution out here in rural land? Why do they keep having to say only the BBC can do such and such, why do they have to say the BBC will lead - it still doesn't seem to have learnt how to be a team player does it.

So what do the pictures above each of the express products tell you about the product and who you ought to be (or aspire to be) to use it?

RC2 of the platform SDK is now available.  Still in the ISO image format but it is now available for download here [via Windows XP Service Pack 2]

Looks like a Monday morning trip to my nearest 2Mb ADSL link is called for

Async callbacks in server controls. ... I think callbacks have the potential of enabling a whole new genre of smart Web applications. .... [via Nikhil Kothari's Weblog]

Interesting that a bit of MS might be interested in a "whole new genre of smart Web applications" when others are just repeating the mantra "smart client, smart client, smart client".

But. It amazed me that ASP.NET ever made it out the door without this sort of feature. The origins of Webservices/RPC were for this sort of thing and it amazes me people can write articles implying they have moved forward the art when this really is very old hat, core stuff and should have been in ASP.NET 1.0. I was beginning to suspect that is wasn't in 1.0 because of a deliberate attempt to hobble web app development in favour of WinForms - good to see it will appear in ASP.NET 2.0 (the trouble is, we still have a long while to wait).

Jupiter recommends that software vendors channel their attention toward usability issues [via Jupiter Research Sees a Return to Rich Client Applications]

Lots and lots of noise around this issue at the moment, with a lot of noise saying throw away the browser and go for .NET or throw away the browser and go for Java, or throw away the browser and go for Flex.

At the moment, I don't see .NET (1.1) as a viable proposition - if nothing else, installation of an app is just too painful. Java, hmmmm, well Java has really never quite made it and Flex still hasn't got over the really bad developer environments there used to be for Flash. But, whilst I agree that throwing away the browser is a good idea, you don't actually have to throw away the underlying technology....

There is a ton of richness in html; simply moving to WinForms or whatever is not going to solve usability problems, that is down to app design. What I do agree with is that browsers make lousy frame windows for a lot (but not all) web applications. Zeepe solves that (and other) problems while maintaining the knowledge investment in html development.

Jeff Davis provides Details on pop-up blocking in xp sp2 rc2 - and other bits.