What is Marionet?

Marionet is a separate product which allows developers to create completely custom applications that access and manage information across the Internet. Designed to work in conjunction with popular authoring tools and AppleScript-aware productivity applications, Marionet is a complete, script-level interface to the Internet that runs quietly in the background as a "faceless" background task. A convenient Control Panel allows users to set common preferences. Responding to simple, English-like commands from authoring tools that utilize an External Command (XCMD) interface, like SuperCard, Apple HyperCard and Macromedia Director, or from productivity applications that support attachable AppleScripts, like Claris FileMaker Pro, Microsoft Excel and UserLand Frontier, Marionet offers complete control over standard Internet protocols and also includes a dramatic new custom peer-to-peer protocol called "Chat." Marionet uses Apple's Thread Manager to full advantage for asynchronous operation and can also function synchronously. Marionet offers complete control over the following Internet protocols: World Wide Web (HTTP) Newsgroups (NNTP) Email (SMTP/POP3 including APOP) File Transfers (FTP) Domain Name Services (DNS) Searching (Gopher) The applications for Marionet run the spectrum from sophisticated Web page authoring and maintenance tools to personal or collaborative applications. The integration of dynamic Internet access and retrieval into CD-ROM titles is also expected to be an early application of the technology. Software companies will be able to provide automatic software updates or build automatic e-mail support as an integral part of their applications. Educational institutions will be able to build Internet browsers that only offer access to selected Internet sites (e.g. the university system). Trainers will be able to deliver "distance-learning" applications that are easily and automatically updated from a central web site. Individuals may want to create multi-player games, collaborate with family members or develop tools to automatically gather "cool site" URLs from the myriad of sources and compile them into a single list.