Where do all these applications come from?

There are a wide variety of tools for creating Web applications and content. Just so you know, here's what Microsoft offers as of this writing:

· Microsoft Notepad.exe, a.k.a. "Visual Notepad." HTML authoring tool of champions. Free with Windows.

· A variety of Internet Assistants for Microsoft applications, including Word, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Microsoft Access, and Schedule+. These allow you to create HTML from data stored in these applications. Word Internet Assistant is also used by some as an HTML editor. (Dr. GUI knows some people who use Excel Internet Assistant to do HTML tables.) Download them free from the Microsoft Office Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/msoffice/).

· Free Viewers for Word (http://www.microsoft.com/word/), PowerPoint (http://www.microsoft.com/mspowerpoint/internet/viewer/), and Excel (http://www.microsoft.com/msexcel/internet/viewer/) allow you to link directly to documents and view them as originally created without conversion to HTML. You install these viewers as helper applications for your browser—and did I say that they're free?

· Microsoft FrontPage 1.1 (http://www.microsoft.com/FrontPage/) is a great package consisting of an HTML editor, file management and link management tools for Web sites, and cool interactive Web extensions called "bots." Best of all, the price has been reduced: Free during the beta, US$149 for the final version (US$49 rebate for users of Microsoft Office for Windows 95 applications).

· Microsoft Internet Studio will be a high-end authoring platform that focuses on creating highly interactive Web applications.

· Jakarta is the code name for Microsoft's Java project. What Dr. GUI saw at the PDC was incredibly cool.

· Visual Basic (http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic/ and Visual C++ (http://www.microsoft.com/visualc/) also play important roles for creating both client- and server-side solutions, including accessing server databases from the Web.