Dave, Hakon: details on Forms^3?
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August 12, 1996 10:00 AM ET
Future IE upgrade will include authoring tools
By _Norvin Leach_
Even though Internet Explorer 3.0 is just out the door, Microsoft Corp. is
already putting together a feature list for Version 5 of the browser.
Internet Explorer 5, which sources said the company is due to start beta
testing at the end of January, will include the ability to build World Wide
Web pages, just as Netscape Communications Corp.'s Navigator Gold does today.
These authoring capabilities will be based on Microsoft's Forms Cubed
engine--a screen-building applet that is slowly becoming a standard engine
across all of the company's development tools.
The Forms Cubed engine lets users drag and drop components such as buttons
and text fields onto a form, then write commands for those components. Forms
Cubed is currently used in Visual Basic, although the engine itself is a
modular product and can accept any code, including HTML.
Microsoft earlier this summer made a stand-alone utility for graphic creation
of HTML pages available on its Web site.