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I Miss Microsoft Encarta

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Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#331

Post by doomjunky »

joblessjunkie wrote: post #267
akgoel wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This basically sounds like WinHelp, which was a compiled format of RTF, prior to the availability of HTML.

It was in fact exactly that. The WinHelp team got folded into our group, and then WinHelp became something of an orphaned project for a while (or maybe forever?).

Off topic: Thank you for getting me to research the history of the hyperlink [1].

- 1945 linked microfilm pages in the essay "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush [2]

- 1964 the term "hyperlink" in Project Xanadu by Ted Nelson

- 1983 the "highlighted link" in HyperTIES system by Dan Ostroffin [3]

- 1989 manifesto for the Web by Tim Berners-Lee

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink#History

[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

[3]: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hyperties/

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#333

Post by penguinlinux »

off topic: If you have a raspberry pi zero w and a large SD card you can download kiwix an offline wikipedia reader that has a built in webserver. It is amazing how you can download wikidedia full or subsets of it and have it running out of a raspi w zero. I am working on a walkthrough on how to do it so I will be posting an article soon.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#334

Post by jve »

In my 30ties, using PC since Windows 95 but FITST TIME ever I hear of this software. Maybe because Games were more interesting. Or maybe because I barely knew english.

But never ever did I hear anyone mentioning it.

Just thought I'll let you all know.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#335

Post by dingaling »

penguinlinux wrote: post #333

off topic: If you have a raspberry pi zero w and a large SD card you can download kiwix an offline wikipedia reader that has a built in webserver. It is amazing how you can download wikidedia full or subsets of it and have it running out of a raspi w zero. I am working on a walkthrough on how to do it so I will be posting an article soon.

You don't need an RPi, kiwix is available for desktop OS as well as phones.

Why carry around another device instead of the computer in your pocket?

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#337

Post by ahje »

ergothus wrote: post #65

I'm either old enough or out-of-touch enough that I never used Encarta. Reading the comments here, I see a lot of mention of the interactive elements and video. I generally prefer text - it's easier to search, and faster to consume. But I don't assume that my preferences are always best, so... Why was Encarta so good? Why is it good enough that we should wish we had it today? Is there some analog today that could let…

> Why was Encarta so good?

Simply put: It was accessible, interactive and enabled users to find information at a pace that wasn't really achievable through other means.

I first used Encarta when I was in the 6th grade, in order to find information for an essay I was writing. The local library had just gotten a new PC with a CD-ROM drive, and the librarian suggested I use Encarta as it was brand new, while any books they had on the subject would be rather old and outdated.

I got down behind the PC, launched Encarta and I was simply blown away. This was my first real multi-media experience and while computers were becoming mainstream in the early 90's, I simply hadn't seen anything like it before. Sure, an Amiga could play music and simple videos, and a fast 486 could decode MPEG video, but hard drives back then were typically less than 100 MB and the amount of storage allowed by CD-ROM's allowed Encarta to be an (until then) unparalleled experience.

Remember, until then, you'd have to use card indexes in order to find the right book about the subject, then look for the book and hope nobody else had borrowed it. With Encarta, it was as simple as typing in a search term and finding the results. Instantly. Internet wasn't really a thing back then - I'd heard about it, it existed, but it didn't reach the general populace until around '94-'95, and there simply wasn't anything comparable until Wikipedia came along.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#338

Post by elboru »

joblessjunkie wrote: post #205

Encarta was part of my first job out of university. I worked in Microsoft's Multimedia Division, tasked with creating the first video and audio drivers for Windows. IIRC the BMP, WAV, and AVI file formats all came from this team at about this time. In the summer of '91, I was tasked with assembling a 386 PC with an early CD-ROM drive to demo an early build of Encarta at a trade show. It was a lot of effort to find a…

This kind of comment is the exact reason why I keep coming back to HN. It's great to read stories of real people who have worked in all kinds of amazing and inspiring projects, thanks for sharing your experience with us, it's always nice to read about technical details of legendary software.

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#339

Post by voltagex_ »

jacobolus wrote: post #217
nickthegreek wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember getting Encarta 95 back when it first came out (I was 14 at the time) and the interactive elements and audio clips blew my mind. It changed how I thought about information and got me that much more invested in learning technology. Literally a week after getting Encarta a door to door encyclopedia salesmen came to our house and I showed him why I did not need his books. You could see the look of terror in h…

My grandparents got a Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia one volume at a time from a supermarket marketing thing in the 1950s. Amusingly, many of the articles in Encarta were copied verbatim from there.

Last part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk_%26_Wagnalls

>"After failing to purchase rights to the text of the Encyclopædia Britannica and World Book Encyclopedia for its Encarta digital encyclopedia, Microsoft reluctantly used (under license) the text of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia for the first editions of its encyclopedia. This licensed text was gradually replaced over the following years with content Microsoft created itself.[7]"

Re: I Miss Microsoft Encarta

#340

Post by mntmoss »

cortesoft wrote: post #49
abhinavsharma wrote: post #22

The period of time before the infiniteness of the internet but after CD-ROMs could pack lots of information was fascinating to grow up in. You had lots of curiosity but still limited access to information so you deeply explored stuff. Add to that, something like Encarta was curated by opinionated editors (whether or not you agree with them is different from the fact that the nature of content is different when it isn…

This makes me think about when I used to go to the MacWorld convention in San Francisco as a kid in the early 90's. My mom would take me out of school every year to go (just for the expo hall, we didn't have enough money to actually go to the conference). I was just overwhelmed by all the different software on offer, and would load up my bag with free samples and spec sheets for software I had no legitimate need for…

This feeling has swept over me, too. We didn't fully realize it at the time, but it was the twilight of our culture being transmitted through "big", tangible products with a distinct publishing apparatus like those demo CDs, VHS tapes, books, newspapers, TV programs etc. Everything went online and became both more available and harder to appreciate - although the old stuff has never gone away entirely, it's just waiting for us to look up from the screen now and then.
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