Low cost hypermedia authoring with the Microsoft Windows Multimedia Viewer Publishing Toolkit

摘要

Recently, Microsoft Corp. launched Version 2 of its Multimedia Viewer Publishing Toolkit (MVPT), thereby facilitating the low-cost authoring of hypermedia systems for the Windows graphical user interface (GUI) on personal computers (PCs). Using these tools, Microsoft have produced a successful series of CD-ROM based hypermedia systems including the Encarta encyclopaedia and the Bookshelf writer's reference. Their Cinemania product consists of one Multimedia Viewer data file (CINMANIA.MVB) containing 33,535 topics and being 139 MByte in size. The MVPT has the following advantages: it is cheap to buy at around #300, produces fast and professional results, and makes good use of the Windows GUI entirely without programming. Microsoft Windows can be criticised as a closed system tied to proprietary standards, but it nevertheless has proved itself in the marketplace. Our research has shown that it is a time-consuming but uncomplicated task to author large hypermedia documents using both the Windows Help Compiler and the MVPT.