Post #3056290

2026-06-02 20:10 UTC

after years of digging and research, i finally found the toolkit that was used to make MS multimedia software Encarta, Dinosaurs and Dangerous Creatures. when i fell in love with these programs, i imagined they were built with a rich multimedia authoring environment/IDE like Macromedia Director. e.g. dragging and dropping images, sounds, text and video onto a stage, animating it with keyframes, and then scripting it for interaction. the toolkit used was, as it turns out, a very roughly hewn collection of individual programs. there was no IDE. all of the content was written in RTF files, which were then compiled with links to external resources like wavs and avi's. i cannot imagine what a nightmare this was for the MS Home teams to work with. there is no drag and drop of any kind, no object linking and embedding (OLÉ!), nor animation editor. this is a dog's breakfast of individual programs written by different people. i'm frankly amazed that the MS Homes teams put together such well-designed programs *despite* how painful this toolkit is to use the one thing i can say in its favour is that it has one badass tetricube logo for cover art :D huge thank you to @philpem@digipres.club for archiving this extremely obscure piece of software https://archive.org/details/microsoft-multimedia-viewer-2.0-rips-20210921-1.7z #multimedia #cdrom #retrocomputing #win31

Replies (19)

@nina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt 2026-06-02 20:14

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net wait, it's time to make a NEW encyclopedia on this engine, right? @philpem@digipres.club

Open ##3281232
@amp@kind.social 2026-06-02 20:15

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club they must have *really* wished RTF was a time-proof format, or a usable format at all

Open ##3281242
@jernej__s@infosec.exchange 2026-06-02 20:15

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club Wasn't RTF also used for help file authoring? I remember that being a huge PITA before CHM help files were introduced.

Open ##3281247
@drj@typo.social 2026-06-02 20:23

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net Makes me feel not too bad for writing a gofer (sort of a Haskell spin-off) program to convert RTF files to CHM for Arthur's interactive ML system for students. ;)

Open ##3281251
@fraggle@social.coop 2026-06-02 20:32

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club reminds me of how the first versions of Microsoft Bookshelf are based on a modified version of the Windows Help program. The big files on the CD that store the dictionary etc. are just HLP files renamed to a different extension. You can even open them in the Wine help viewer. I have a fond memory of that early version and how the entrypoint into the system was a skeuomorphic interface: it showed a literal picture of books on a shelf and you could click each of them to open them and look things up. They got rid of it in later versions but at the time it really stoked my imagination and showed the possibility of the CDROM format. A whole bookshelf of reference volumes, all on a single disc.

Open ##3281253
@branch300bpm@social.vivaldi.net 2026-06-02 20:41

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net Actually this looks like modded version of Help Compiler tool used for producing WinHelp-compatible .hlp files. @philpem@digipres.club

Open ##3281263
@rodneylives@mefi.social 2026-06-02 20:41

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club Two years ago I had cause to be in the very nice multi-story library in downtown Atlanta, and I noticed they still have a print edition of Microsoft Encarta on their reference shelves.

Open ##3281264
@foone@digipres.club 2026-06-02 21:03

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club You can compare this with what they did in 3D Movie Maker, another Microsoft Home product: the interactive-building elements (and the internal help) are built on top of a simple adhoc scripting language they compile into pseudo-help files.

Open ##3281266
@lukaszt@mastodon.social 2026-06-02 21:07

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club very interesting insight. I remember similar software from my childhood, it was called "Encyklopedia Przyrody" and was translated version of "Encyclopedia of Nature". I have downloaded it recently from archive.org I loved this. CD came with my first PC

Open ##3281267
@xale@tech.lgbt 2026-06-02 21:30

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club this is like the multimedia equivalent of Chris Sawyer writing Rollercoaster Tycoon in raw x86 assembly edit: "Chris" not "Tom" lmao

Open ##3281269
@raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie 2026-06-02 21:50

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club I hated Macromedia Director. There were much nicer tools.

Open ##3281270
@erraggy@hachyderm.io 2026-06-02 23:32

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net OMG, Image HotSpots! Whew

Open ##3281271
@tubetime@mastodon.social 2026-06-03 00:22

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net reminds me of the tools used to author Windows HLP files.

Open ##3281272
@tibi2@mstdn.social 2026-06-03 02:46

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club wow I guess RTF really was yesteryear's markdown

Open ##3281274
@slowtiger@berlin.social 2026-06-03 08:12

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club Macromedia Director didn't have Drag'n'drop. You had to import with the usual file dialogue. I used it a lot in the 90's.

Open ##3281275
@andrew@social.hodgson.io 2026-06-03 10:35

@alexchapman@vee.seedy.cc @vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net I remember years ago I got hold of a copy of Microsoft Musical Instruments. I think that used a different content management system as if I remember correctly all the text was in BMP images. I think that was one of the first Microsoft Multimedia releases.

Open ##3281276
@kirby@cathode.church 2026-06-03 11:39

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net I remember something similar for DOS that was used quite a bit, with instantly recognizable UI elements... but I can't for the life of me remember the name. Come on brain it's only been a littler over 30 years... :neodog_think_googly:

Open ##3281286
@philpem@digipres.club 2026-06-03 16:27

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net It was actually preserved by @david_rysk@mastodon.social ! We're just trying to find time to scan the manuals. I've been told some of the Tandy VIS titles were made with this too - or at least it was available as an option.

Open ##3281290
@jaj@mastodon.social 2026-06-03 19:56

@vga256@mastodon.tomodori.net @philpem@digipres.club @david_rysk@mastodon.social This is Windows 3.1 era. Did they still use that for Encarta 98?

Open ##3281292