The Internet Explorer 4.0 desktop—including the Start menu and Taskbar—is your home base for launching programs, switching between files, and staying informed about what's happening on the Internet or an internal intranet. Users, corporations, and Internet Content Providers (ICPs) can also add any number of additional Desktop Components. And users always have the option to remove or "autohide" any component.

Desktop Components are an evolution of today's desktop shortcuts; they can be any size or shape and can display any HTML-based content. Components are also dynamic. Users can, for example, place a Web page on the desktop and configure it to update at regularly scheduled times, so the content is always fresh.

What are the benefits?

For sample Desktop Components, check out the Desktop Component Gallery. Some great examples of Desktop Components include:

• Tickers for sports scores, stock quotes, or weather.
• Headline lists for news stories or announcements.
• Pop-up broadcast messages for internal corporate announcements.
• Notifications of new mail, chat, or public discussion forums.
• Pictures of sports highlights or breaking news stories. A picture can be configured for daily update; clicking the picture could launch a browser window to preview the related story.

How does it work?

The Active Desktop is built in two layers:

• a transparent icon layer that displays all the users' existing desktop shortcuts
• a background HTML layer that hosts all Desktop Components

By providing an HTML layer that can host any HTML-based component, Internet Explorer 4.0 offers a 100% customizable space for creating dynamic links to your favorite Web content. Access is just a single mouse-click away.

Here are a couple examples of how a corporation might use the Active Desktop on an intranet:

Active Desktop Samples