Windows® 98 Unleashed

Channel Surfing: Internet Explorer's Active Channels

A typical Web surfing safari involves heading out onto the Web's waves and either paddling to sites you know about or cruising for new and interesting places. In other words, you do all the work. Happily, as you've seen, subscriptions relieve some of the burden by either sending you or notifying you about updated pages.

However, when it comes to surfing, Internet Explorer can go one better: active channels. An active channel is a special Web site that features content that changes regularly. It could be news, weather, sports scores, trivia, or even “live” broadcasts. The idea is that you subscribe to these channels, so the content is delivered to your desktop automatically. (In the vernacular, ...