Channel Definition Format (CDF) was an

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

file format formerly used in conjunction with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

's Active Channel,

Active Desktop Active Desktop was a feature of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, Internet Explorer 4.0's optional Windows Desktop Update that allowed users to add Hypertext Markup Language, HTML content to the desktop metaphor, desktop, along with some other featu ...

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 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

(W3C) in March 1997 for consideration as a web standard, CDF marked Microsoft's attempt to capitalize on the

push technology Push technology, also known as server Push, refers to a communication method, where the communication is initiated by a server rather than a client. This approach is different from the " pull" method where the communication is initiated by a clien ...

trend led by PointCast. The most notable implementation of CDF was Microsoft's

, an optional feature introduced with the Internet Explorer 4.0 browser in September 1997. Smart Offline Favorites was introduced in Internet Explorer 5.0. 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 ...

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 o ...

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 version of Internet Explorer, a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006. It was the first major update to the browser since 2001. It does not support ve ...

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