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Microsoft said that the final release of its next-generation Web browser will follow Netscape's lead and introduce a controversial new feature known as keyword searching.
But Web developers, eyeing Wednesday's release of the first public beta of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, said the company is misplacing its priorities.
The developers note that the company has made little headway toward improving the browser's underlying technology and say the program comes up short in support of Web standards.
Microsoft said the new Explorer represents a significant advance in the software. "We really took a look at where we could build in intelligence throughout the product," said Rob Bennett, product manager for Microsoft's Internet client group.
The keyword feature, called AutoSearch, is not included in Wednesday's release. But the final version, due to ship in the first quarter of next year, will support it as part of a larger family of technologies called IntelliSense.
AutoSearch interprets words and phrases entered into the browser's address bar. It then makes a best guess at which site the user is looking for. Entering the word "Apple," for example, will bring up the Web site for Apple Computer.
The feature is similar to the Internet Keyword feature of Netscape's Communicator. Netscape first introduced the function in an early beta version of Navigator 4.5 released on 1 June.
Initially, Netscape's feature automatically matched a keyword to a single Web site, generating controversy among users and webmasters. Critics said the keywords silently changed the behavior of the software. Further, they said sites were inappropriately matched to generic words that don't belong to any single Web site.
