1.	We were already working on ways to connect servers using a protocol called SOAP, which we designed with Microsoft and Developmentor starting in Spring 1998, but we hadn't thought of using SOAP to connect writing tools to servers until the summer of 1999.
2.	The reasoning went like this. What makes the browser such a great network editing tool? Answer -- it understands HTTP at its core. What if we made a desktop writing tool that understands HTTP at its core? What would that look like? How would it work?
3.	Here's what we came up with. In the browser, right under the Edit This Page button, is another, smaller button that says PIKE, which is the name of our desktop editor. Click on the button and the server sends the contents of the story to the editor. It opens in a window. The editor comes to the front. You edit, the normal way, using all its wizzyness, drag and drop, expand and collapse, reorganization and annotation, all the things no Web browser is ever going to do (at least not in our lifetimes).
4.	But what do you do when you want to update the copy on the server? How complicated should that be? Well, luckily your braincells are already programmed to know how to do this. Pull down the File menu and choose Save. That's it. As with the browser-based editor, we worked, even hacked, at simplicity. We don't think it can get much simpler than this, and simplicity is the single biggest thing that's in the way of the Web as an easy writing environment.
5.	Now what does this have to do with XML over HTTP and SOAP? Well, that's how it works. That's how the workstation application and the server are connected. So in this context, XML is simply enabling technology, but it's worth lifting the hood, because the way it enables is very different, because it is open.