Microsoft Bookshelf

Microsoft Bookshelf è stato un reference collezione introdotta a partire dal 1987 come parte Microsoft's lavoro estensivo in CD-ROM promozionali tecnologici come distribuzione medium per electronic publishing.

La versione originale di MS-DOS showcased the massive storage capacity of CD-ROM technology, and was accessed while the user was using one of 13 different word processor programs that Bookshelf supported. Subsequent versions were produced for Windows and became a commercial success as part of the Microsoft Home brand. It was often bundled with personal computers as a cheaper alternative to the Encarta Suite.

Contenuti

L'edizione originale del 1987 conteneva Il Thesaurus di Roget, [[Il dizionario dell'eredità americana della lingua inglese]], Almanacco del mondo e il Libro dei Fatti, Le quotazioni familiari di Bartlett, Il manuale Chicago dello stile (13esima edizione), l'elenco dei codici postali degli Stati Uniti, Houghton Mifflin Usage Alert, il correttore e verificatore dello spelling della Houghton Mifflin, Fonti di informazione per il businness, e Forme e Lettere.

The Windows release of Bookshelf added a number of new reference titles, including the The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia. Other titles were added and some were dropped in subsequent years. By 1994, the English-language also contained the Columbia Dictionary of Quotations; The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia; the Hammond Intermediate World Atlas; and The People's Chronology.^[1] By 2000, the collection came to include the Encarta Desk Encyclopedia, the Encarta Desk Atlas, and a specialized Internet Directory.

In later editions of the Encarta Suite (2000 and onwards), Bookshelf was replaced with a dedicated Encarta Dictionary, a superset of the printed edition. There has been some controversy over the decision, since the dictionary lacks the other books provided in Bookshelf which many found to be a useful reference, such as the dictionary of quotations (replaced with a quotations section in Encarta that links to relevant articles and people) and the Internet Directory, although the directory is now a moot point since many of the sites listed in offline directories no longer exist.

Technology

Bookshelf 1.0 engine

Bookshelf 1.0 used a proprietary hypertext engine that Microsoft acquired when it bought the company Cytation in 1986.^[2] Also used for Microsoft Stat Pack and Microsoft Small Business Consultant, the Bookshelf was a Terminate and Stay Resident program that ran alongside a dominant program, unbeknownst to the dominant program. Like Apple's similar Hypercard reader, Bookshelf engine's files used a single compound document, containing large numbers of subdocuments ("cards" or "articles"). They both differ from current browsers which normally treat each "page" or "article" as a separate file.

Though similar to Apple's Hypercard reader in many ways, the Bookshelf engine had several key differences. Unlike Hypercard files, Bookshelf files required compilation and complex markup codes. This made the files more difficult to pirate, addressing a key concern of early electronic publishers. Furthermore, Bookshelf's engine was designed to run as fast as possible on slow first-generation CD-ROM drives, some of which required as much as a half-second to move the drive head. Such hardware constraints made Hypercard impractical for high-capacity CD-ROMs. Bookshelf also had full text searching capability, which made it easy to find needed information.

Bookshelf 2.0 engine

Collaborating with DuPont, the Microsoft CD-ROM division developed a Windows version of its engine for applications as diverse as document management, online help, and a CD-ROM encyclopedia. In a skunk works project, these developers worked secretly with Multimedia Division developers so that the engine would be usable for more ambitious multimedia applications. Thus they integrated a multimedia markup language, full text search, and extensibility using software objects,^[3] all of which are commonplace in modern internet browsing.

In 1992, Microsoft started selling the Bookshelf engine to third-party developers, marketing the product as Microsoft Multimedia Viewer. The idea was that such a tool would help a burgeoning growth of CD-ROM titles that would spur demand for Windows. Although the engine had multimedia capabilities that would not be matched by Web browsers until the late 1990s, Microsoft Viewer did not enjoy commercial success as a standalone product. However, Microsoft continued to use the engine for its Encarta and WinHelp applications, though the multimedia functions are rarely used in Windows help files.

Viewer 3.0

In 1993, the developers who were working on the next generation viewer were moved to the Cairo systems group which was charged with delivering Bill Gates' vision of Information at your fingertips. This advanced browser was a fully componentized application using what are now known as Component Object Model objects, designed for hypermedia browsing across large networks and whose main competitor was thought to be Lotus Notes. Long before Netscape appeared, this team, known as the WEB (web enhanced browser) team had already shipped a network capable hypertext browser capable of doing everything that HTML browsers would not be able to do until the turn of the century. Nearly all technologies of Cairo shipped. The WEB browser was not one of them, though it influenced the design of many other common Microsoft technologies.

Like other hypermedia engines of the time, Microsoft like Apple struggled and failed to understand how it could make money directly from a multimedia browser. Long after the internet revolution, companies continue to struggle to understand how to make money directly from multimedia browser technology but seldom succeed.

1. ^ Birger Birger Nielsen, Microsoft Bookshelf 1994, in The Tea Page, 2006. URL consultato il 18 aprile 2006. Più di un parametro tra cognome e autore specificato (aiuto)
2. ^ Roy Allan, A History of the Personal Computer: The People and the Technology (PDF), in Chapter 12 Microsoft in the 1980s, Allan Publishing 2001 ISBN 0-9689108-0-7, 2001. URL consultato il 18 aprile 2006.
3. ^ Stephen Pruitt, Microsoft Multimedia Viewer How-To Cd: Create Exciting Multimedia With Video, Animation, Music, and Speech for Windows/Book and Cd, Waite Group Pr, ISBN 1-878739-60-3. Errore nelle note: Parametro "2.0" non valido nel tag <ref>. I parametri supportati sono: dir, follow, group, name.