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Microsoft Multimedia Viewer

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Microsoft Multimedia Viewer or simply Viewer was a multimedia authoring tool for Windows built upon WinHelp online help format. It was designed for Microsoft's CD-ROM publishing efforts of the early 1990s, as well as for use by third-party multimedia developers. CD-ROM reference titles developed with Viewer technology included Microsoft's Encarta, Cinemania and Bookshelf.[1]

Just like WinHelp files, Viewer files were compiled from Rich Text Format (RTF) source documents. Some tools for .htm file decompiling, like WinHelp Decompiler (open source) or Herd Software's Help to RTF, can extract them from Viewer's .mvb files.

The development of Viewer, initially named "WinDoc" and "WinBook," began in 1989.[2] The initial version of Viewer, 1.0, was released in 1991, with a 2.0 version announced in 1993. The authoring tool could be used to make titles for Modular Windows devices like Tandy's VIS, as well as Sony's PIX-100 portable multimedia CD player.[3]

Viewer 1.0 was a part of Microsoft's Multimedia Development Kit.[4], superceded by Microsoft Multimedia Viewer Publishing Toolkit with the next version of the tool. Both products were sold at $495. A custom version of Viewer 2.0, limited to 25 topics, was included with a $39.95 tutorial book published in 1994 by the Waite Group.[5]

Reception

InfoWorld praised the Viewer 1.0's full-text search ability and relatively low price while criticizing the lack of animation support and a "tedious and error-prone" word processor-based workflow.[6]

While Viewer 1.0 was intended to be the main tool to build the original edition of Encarta, the encyclopedia's developers deemed it inadequate for the task. 34% of total Encarta code was added to build features which Viewer could not provide on its own, according to its developers’ accounts.[2] A preliminary version of Viewer 2.0 was made available to the Encarta team before the new version of the authoring tool was fully completed.

See also

References

  1. ^ Pruitt, Stephen (1994). Microsoft Multimedia Viewer How-To CD: Create Exciting Multimedia with Video, Animation, Music, and Speech for Windows. Corte Madera, CA: Waite Group Press. pp. 7–12. ISBN 9781878739605.
  2. ^ a b Moody, Fred (1995). I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier. Viking. p. 101. ISBN 9780670848751.
  3. ^ Damore, Kelley (1993-04-12). "Toolkits facilitate writing multimedia apps". InfoWorld. p. 20.
  4. ^ Petzold, Charles (October 29, 1991). "Beyond the Beep: The Coming of Multimedia Windows". PCMag.
  5. ^ Simon, Barry (1994-10-25). "Learning to Use a Programmer's Gem". PCMag. p. 73. Retrieved 2022-04-20.
  6. ^ Canning, Jim (1992-03-09). Kaliczak, Anne (ed.). "Multimedia authoring tools". InfoWorld. pp. 80–93. Retrieved 2022-04-20.
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