Channel Definition Format (CDF) was an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

file format formerly used in conjunction with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Active Channel Active Channel was a technology introduced by Internet Explorer 4.0 in 1997. It allowed synchronizing website content and viewing it offline. It made use of the Channel Definition Format, which was designed to "offer frequently updated collecti ...

Active Desktop Active Desktop was a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0's optional Windows Desktop Update that allowed users to add HTML content to the desktop, along with some other features. This function was intended to be installed on the then-curre ...

and Smart Offline Favorites technologies. The format was designed to "offer frequently updated collections of information, or channels, from any web server for automatic delivery to compatible receiver programs." Active Channel allowed users to subscribe to channels and have scheduled updates delivered to their desktop. Smart Offline Favorites, like channels, enabled users to view webpages from the cache.

History

Submitted to the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

(W3C) in March 1997 for consideration as a

web standard Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of st ...

, CDF marked Microsoft's attempt to capitalize on the

push technology Push technology or server push is a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull/get, where the request for the transmission of informat ...

trend led by

PointCast PointCast was a dot-com company founded in 1992 by Christopher R. Hassett in Sunnyvale, California. PointCast Network The company's initial product amounted to a screensaver that displayed news and other information, delivered live over the Inter ...

. The most notable implementation of CDF was Microsoft's

, an optional feature introduced with the

Internet Explorer 4.0 Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is a graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for the classic Mac OS, Solaris, and H ...

browser in September 1997. Smart Offline Favorites was introduced in

Internet Explorer 5.0 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integrat ...

. CDF prefigured aspects of the

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

file format introduced by

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

in March 1999, and of web syndication at large. Unlike RSS, CDF was never widely adopted and its use remained very limited. As a consequence, Microsoft removed CDF support from

Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006, as the seventh version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is par ...

in 2006.

Example

A generic CDF file: Title of Channel Synopsis of channel's contents. Page Two's Title Synopsis of Page Two's contents.

References

External links

Introduction to Active Channel TechnologyHow to Create Channel Definition Format (CDF) Files
{{Internet Explorer Internet Explorer Push technology Windows 98 Windows communication and services Web syndication formats XML-based standards

History

Example

See also

References

External links