The CDF file contains numerous options for scheduling content delivery. You can set an update schedule for your content ranging from an hour to days or weeks, and you can control the appearance of your channel's hierarchical index in the Internet Explorer 4.0 channel pane.

Adding a Channel to the Channel Pane
Subscriptions and Scheduling

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The simplest, most direct way to reference a CDF file is to create a hyperlink to it from any Web page. For example, you can add a CDF file hyperlink to text or an image in the usual fashion:

<A HREF=”http://www.microsoft.com/actutorial/default.cdf”>Get the Site Builder Channel!</A>

When Internet Explorer 4.0 loads the link, it will see that it is a CDF file and display a subscription dialog. The user interacts with the subscription dialog, and if he or she subscribes, the channel will get added to the channel pane.

Visitors subscribe to your channel by interacting with the Subscription Wizard. After subscribing, viewers get updates of channel content periodically. The update intervals you specify in the CDF control the default choices the visitor sees when subscribing. The visitor has options: accepting your defaults, setting up a custom update schedule, or manually updating. The user can also specify that updates be sent as e-mail.