Microsoft has announced their decision to cancel the launch of smart tags, a software feature that was to be included in the Windows XP. This decision follows criticism that smart tags would redirect users to Web sites chosen by Microsoft. "This will not affect Office XP at all," said Anders Brown, Lead Product Manager of the Microsoft Office Developer and Solutions Group. "In fact, we'll continue to invest in developer resources for smart tag development. This does mean, though, that recognition won't occur natively in Internet Explorer 6. But developers can still create the smart tag HTML markup by hand and distribute smart tag DLL's if they want to, using the Smart Tag SDK." Brown stated that smart tags will still work when Office XP is running on Windows XP. The report said the smart tags won't appear in the version of Windows XP or in the latest version of its Internet Explorer Web browser. Smart tags would have allowed Internet Explorer to turn any word on a Web site into a link to Microsoft's sites and services, or to any Web site that it chose.
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