How Do I Download the Reference for Internet Explorer Development? (Where's the SDK?)

January 26, 1998

The Web Snapshot CD was produced in a limited run during the Internet Explorer 5 and Internet Tools beta release. It is currently no longer available, but it should return by the time Internet Explorer 5 officially releases to the web.

January 8, 1998

The Web Snapshot CD described below is now available from the SBN Bookstore! If you want acces to all the great content of the Web Workshop without having to pay continual Internet connect costs, this CD is the answer for you.

July 21, 1998

The Microsoft® Internet Explorer SDK* team is fully committed to providing complete technical information on Internet Explorer technologies to Web authors and developers. With the 5.0 Developer Preview release of Internet Explorer, we decided to partner with the MSDN Online team, to create a high-quality Web site that integrated Internet Explorer developer references and MSDN Online articles.

The benefits of merging the two sets of content and making it available on the Web were too great to ignore any longer. Content is live and easy to update on the Web; developers don't need to worry about getting out-of-date or incorrect documentation. New material is added on an ongoing basis and old material is corrected, freshened, or removed as Internet Time marches on. Solution-oriented articles sit less than a virtual root away from associated reference information. We can take advantage of all the capabilities of ASP and Dynamic HTML to deliver a living, dynamic source of Web development information. The information on the Web site is accessible to the largest possible audience and documentation is delivered in a standard, completely cross-platform format.

In short, the Web is changing the previous definition of the traditional Microsoft SDK.

That said, we've heard your cries for a better offline solution. Many of you, particularly those of you who need to pay connection fees by the hour, have requested download packages of the core Internet Explorer documentation, just like it was back in the "old days" of the Internet Client SDK.

Around the time of the next public beta of Internet Explorer, we are tentatively planning to release CD snapshots of the MSDN Online Web site as well as .CHM files for use with HTML Help and the Visual Studio help system. Note that some of the benefits of a living Web site are lost when content is delivered on a static medium, so when these files become available, we recommend that you continue to visit the SBN Workshop site to find the most up-to-date content and developer reference material.

These are rough plans and entirely subject to change. We'll update this page when additional information becomes available, so please check back.

For those of you inconvenienced by our current inability to offer a download or CD, we apologize. Simply, the Web Workshop site is the future of the SDK and making it work well as an online site is our number one priority. Until we have the CD and HTML Help snapshots of the Web site available, let us know what we can do to improve the site itself. Remember that your feedback will also affect the content you get offline (in whatever form), since offline solutions will be based on the SBN Workshop site structure and features.

* Editor's Note: "SDK" ("Software Development Kit") is an ancient term used to denote packages of samples and documentation created for developers interested in taking advantage of a particular Microsoft technology. For example, the Microsoft Platform SDK available from the MSDN site is the current all-encompassing source of information on how to program for Windows®-based operating systems. Some of you may have heard of the ActiveX SDK or the Internet Client SDK. These were development kits dedicated to HTML and Internet Explorer technologies, and are the precursors to today's MSDN Online Web Workshop Web site. SDKs are not just for developers any more -- we've moved ours online and believe that page designers, content authors, and Webmasters as well as developers will find useful information in our Web "SDK."