9. Developing Smart Tags and Smart Documents

Smart tags, which were introduced in Microsoft Office XP, allow developers to build solutions that can recognize data and provide additional functionality for that data. Smart tags recognize common terms, and based on that recognition, a program can perform actions associated with those terms. The best examples of smart tags are in Office. For example, when you type a stock symbol or a person’s name in a Microsoft Word document, you might want to look up recent news about the stock or send the person an e-mail message. Before smart tags, you had to fire up your Web browser, go to a financial site, and look up the news about the company. Or to send e-mail, you had to start your e-mail client, type the person’s e-mail address, and then send your message. The purple dotted lines under the text in Figure 9-1 show how recognized smart tags are indicated in Office.

Figure 9-1. Recognized smart tag terms in Word 2003

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