MICROSOFT TO WEAVE WEB INTO PC.

Byline: John Markoff The New York Times

Microsoft Corp.'s plan to fold World Wide Web capabilities into the company's Windows 95 PC operating system software is in many ways similar to technology already under development by other companies, including Apple Computer Inc. and Netscape Communications Corp.

But the reason that many industry experts see Microsoft's move as a fundamental shift in personal computing - whether or not they consider it the most elegant approach technologically - is one undeniable fact: Because it is the company whose software controls the basic operations of 80 percent of the world's personal computers, when Microsoft strikes out for a new horizon, the industry marches along.

In simplest terms, Microsoft intends to overhaul the decades-old and often cumbersome, ``folder and file'' system for organizing information on a PC. This rigidly hierarchical organizational scheme can make stored material hard to find. And it can make it difficult for all but the most sophisticated users to customize the way their PCs process and display information.

Folders and files were a metaphor that served their purpose in the days when word processing and spreadsheets were the primary applications for PCs. But compared with the free-flowing workings of the World Wide Web - the multimedia Internet service in which even novices can find their way around the global network and download images, audio and video files with the click of a mouse - the inner workings of a Windows PC have remained inflexible, limiting and frustrating.

And so now, Microsoft intends to weave the Web into the PC. By the end of the summer, the company will begin giving away test versions of its Web-browser software, Internet Explorer Version 4.0, which will become an integral part of the Windows 95 operating system.

Why does this matter? If it works as promised, and as recently demonstrated to a reporter, Microsoft's new technology will mean a much richer world of computer data for the millions of people whose PCs use Windows 95. If the technology works, the PC is about to leave the epoch of desktop computing and enter a new era of television-like, multimedia computing.

And from the user's standpoint, it will make little difference whether information resides on the computer's hard disk or on a Web server computer a hemisphere away.

``It's a very simple and elegant metaphor,'' said Alan Cooper, the founder of Cooper Software in Palo Alto, Calif., and the original designer of an older Microsoft programming language, Visual Basic. ``You can explore your local hard disk or you can explore the infinite disk of the Web.''

The new approach incorporates the Web's hypertext markup language into the Windows 95 operating system. This promises a new era of personal computing in which users can much more easily embellish their creations with visual and aural flourishes - whether adding animation to e-mail, installing one's own stock-quote ticker as a permanent fixture on the computer screen, or adding video to a personal Web page.

``The job of creating Web pages is something everyone will do every day - instead of just the three pony-tailed kids in the back office,'' said Jerry Michalski, editor of Release 1.0, a computer industry newsletter. ``This will change your relationships with other people, ranging from your stockbroker to your teacher.''

Companies, meantime, would be able to organize corporate data bases so that all of the information a worker needs is built right in to the basic desktop display of his or her computer. And the on-screen information could be updated continuously and automatically, depending on the current task being performed.

Computer researchers say the new technology will not only make it far simpler to find information, by allowing users to employ powerful Internet ``search engines'' to track down material no matter where it resides.

They say the new approach also will give new impetus to distributed computing technologies like Sun Microsystems' Java, which has been incorporated into Explorer 4.0 and will enable small programs to flit seamlessly back and forth across computer networks to perform functions for the user, like comparing air fares and booking flights.

The vision of a vast library of seamless information - which Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates refers to as ``information at your fingertips'' - has long been a primary goal of computer researchers.

As early as July 1945, Vanevar Bush, President Truman's science adviser, wrote a seminal magazine article titled ``As We May Think,'' in which he envisioned a memex - ``a device in which an individual stores all his books, records and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.''

Following in Bush's footsteps more than 20 years later, in 1968, the computer researcher Douglas Engelbart gave a remarkable demonstration at a computer conference, introducing the world's best computer scientists to his vision of computer mice, on-screen windows and ``hypertext'' information retrieval systems.

Microsoft's Explorer 4.0 is the company's effort to roll those elements, and more, into a single software technology. Because the company so dominates PC software, Microsoft's effort now to ``embrace and extend'' the Internet - another Gatesian phrase - raise concerns among competitors, many of which see instead an attempt by Gates' company to engulf and devour the Internet market.

Not that Microsoft's rivals are standing idly by.

Apple Computer and IBM have been developing technology similar to Microsoft's in recent years. And Netscape Communications, whose Navigator remains a more popular Web browser than Microsoft's Explorer, continues to roll out ever richer, more powerful versions of its software.

Microsoft's critics, of whom there are many, contend that the company is trying to impose technology on the industry that is inferior to that being developed by its rivals.

The company is basing its new approach on an existing Microsoft technology known as object linking and embedding, or OLE. It is a modular approach to software development, in which programs are assembled from building-block components.

For this new effort, Microsoft has revamped OLE and renamed it Active-X so that software components can be organized in ways particularly tailored for use on the World Wide Web.

Company officials say that Active-X will make it possible for a computer user to download all sorts of software components - including those written in Microsoft's Visual Basic programming language and Sun's Java - and have them interact accurately and automatically on each Web page.

Other companies are already developing Active-X components for specific purposes, like electronic retailing transactions over the Internet.

On July 26, Microsoft announced that it would hand over future development and oversight of Active-X technology to an independent industry group as a way to ensure that it has widespread support in the software community.

It is a move to demonstrate that Microsoft intends to take a more open approach to Internet technical standards, compared with the industry chokehold the company has tended to use with PC technology. And yet, it is also a strategy meant to win Active-X adherents at a crucial time when other, arguably better alternatives are available.

Apple and IBM, for example, are jointly pursuing a competitor to Active-X, known as Open Doc. And Apple has developed its own Open Doc-based Internet retrieval program known as Cyberdog, which like Microsoft's Explorer 4.0 is designed to integrate desktop and Web functions.

So far, Apple is giving away Cyberdog software free via the World Wide Web, but has not spelled out its business plans for the technology.

Many computer scientists say Active-X is less elegant and less powerful than Open Doc. But as is frequently the case with Microsoft, marketing prowess may ultimately overshadow technical shortcomings.

CAPTION(S):

Box

Box: Weaving the Web Into the PC

Microsoft plans to introduce technology that would blend the Windows 95 PC operating system with software components of the Internet's World Wide Web. The goal is to make PCs more functional and easier to use by handling all material as if it were a Web page.

The New York Times