Enabling real-time content on a Windows desktop. Introduced with Internet Explorer 4.0 in 1997 for Windows 95 and Windows NT, Web pages could be turned into desktop items that were updated automatically. For example, a stock ticker Web page could be made a desktop item, or a company's intranet home page could become wallpaper visible on each user's computer. Active Desktop supported Active Channels, which were subscriber-based content delivery systems from external or internal websites. Active Desktop was dropped in Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003 was the last server OS to support it. See
Active Channel.