>This statement I really have to disagree with. The Internet will always be too unpredicatble for commercial applications to be based on it. Until MS installs the Internet2 ;) true commercial apps will not exist. Only INTRANET applications can use xHTML for serious database applications.

I wasn't referring to internet apps, mainly intranet or just Windows apps. IE5 is part of Windows, and so is the rendering engines like MSHTML.DLL and MSXML.DLL. You can use any browser you want, but you can also have a form based on IE5's DHTML/XML rendering engine including ActiveX controls. Just create a web page with a .HTA extenstion, and you get a form that hosts the web browser control, no security, just like a VB, VFP, or C++ form.

>DHTML and XML are great improvements over HTML, no argument there. HTML was designed over 20 years ago for text/graphics without data entry. As long as it is HTML based it will be difficult to create WIN32 equivalent applications in native HTML/DHTML/XML.

>And forcing users to use IE5 for all those great new HTML extensions nullifies the reasons we wanted to make internet aware apps in the first place!

Nobody is forcing use of IE5 for apps. You can have the IE5 components installed, as in Windows 2000 will have. Then you can have a form that is DHTML based including ActiveX controls, and it can be much more rich and flexible/powerful than a Win32s form.

Cross-browser issues will exist for a long time, and that requires a different architecture.