This is cool and not too many people know about this.
Check out this video or follow the instructions below.
A fast way to find Encarta definitions for words and phrases on a Web page.
Just download and you can then high-light the specific text on the Web page and select “Encarta Definition”.
This Encarta is very small and working very well with Internet Explorer.
Here is the screenshot.
Well, actually it is Microsoft Encarta and it is yet another best encyclopedia.
I’ve copied and pasted about Microsoft Encarta here to let you guys see what it is all about before download Encarta.
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. As of 2008, the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles,[1] numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and atlas, and homework tools, and was available on the World Wide Web by yearly subscription or by purchase on DVD or multiple CDs. Many articles could also be viewed online free of charge, a service supported by advertisements.[2]
Microsoft published similar encyclopedias under the Encarta trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. Localized versions may contain contents licensed from available national sources and may contain more or less content than the full English version. For example, the Dutch version has content from the Dutch Winkler Prins encyclopedia.
In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing the Encarta disc and online versions. The MSN Encarta site in all countries except Japan was closed on October 31, 2009. Japan’s Encarta site was closed on December 31, 2009.[3][4] The Encarta online dictionary at dictionary.msn.com continues to be operated by Microsoft.[5]
History
After the successes of Compton’s Multimedia Encyclopedia (1989) and The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (1992),[6] Microsoft initiated Encarta by purchasing non-exclusive rights to the Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, incorporating it into its first edition in 1993. (Funk & Wagnalls continued to publish revised editions for several years independently of Encarta, but then ceased printing in the late 1990s.) Previously having been referred to by the codename “Gandalf,”[7][8][9][10] the name Encarta was created for Microsoft by an advertising agency.[11] Microsoft had originally approached Encyclopædia Britannica, the gold standard of encyclopedias for over a century, in the 1980s, but it declined, believing its print media sales would be hurt; however the Benton Foundation was forced to sell Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. at below book value in 1996 when the print sales could no longer compete with Encarta and the Microsoft distribution channel which focused on bundling[12] copies with new computer systems.[13]
In the late 1990s, Microsoft bought Collier’s Encyclopedia and New Merit Scholar’s Encyclopedia from Macmillan and incorporated them into Encarta. Thus the current Microsoft Encarta can be considered the successor of the Funk and Wagnalls, Collier, and New Merit Scholar encyclopedias. None of these formerly successful encyclopedias remained in print for long after being merged into Encarta.
Microsoft introduced several regional versions of Encarta translated into languages other than English. For example, the Brazilian Portuguese version was introduced in 1999 and suspended in 2002.[14] The Spanish version is somewhat smaller than the English one, at 42,000 articles.
In July 2006, Websters Multimedia, a Bellevue, Washington subsidiary of London-based Websters International Publishers, took over maintenance of Encarta from Microsoft.[15] The last version is Encarta Premium 2009, released in August 2008.[1]
Microsoft announced in March 2009 that it would cease to sell Microsoft Student and all editions of Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009, citing changes in the way people seek information and in the traditional encyclopedia and reference material market as the key reasons behind the termination.[3] Updates for Encarta were offered until October 2009.[3] Additionally, MSN Encarta web sites were discontinued around October 31, 2009, with the exception of Encarta Japan which was discontinued on December 31, 2009. Existing MSN Encarta Premium (part of MSN Premium) subscribers were refunded.[3] Encarta’s closing is widely attributed to competition from the much larger online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.[16][17][18]
Technology
Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2007 running on Windows XP.
Before the emergence of the World Wide Web for information browsing, Microsoft recognized the importance of having an engine that supported a multimedia markup language, full text search, and extensibility using software objects. The hypertextdisplay, hyperlinking and search software was created by a team of CD-ROM Division developers in the late 1980s who designed it as a generalized engine for uses as diverse as interactive help, document management systems and as ambitious as a multimedia encyclopedia. Encarta was able to use various Microsoft technologies because it was extensible with software components for displaying unique types of multimedia information. For example, a snap in map engine is adapted from itsMapPoint software. More information on the hypertext and search engine used by Encarta may be found in the Microsoft Bookshelf article.
Unlike Microsoft Office, Encarta disc version only supports Microsoft Windows with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Encarta 98 was the last version to be released for the Macintosh. However, people who use other operating systems could still accessEncarta’s website.
Encarta uses database technologies to generate much of its multimedia content. For example, Encarta generates each zoomable map from a global geographic information system database on demand.
When a user uses the copy and paste function of Microsoft Windows on Encarta on more than five words, Encarta automatically appends a copyright boilerplate message after the paste.
Chatbot
Encarta’s content was accessible using a conversational interface on Windows Live Messenger via the MSN Bot “Encarta Instant Answers”.[27] The bot could answer many encyclopedia related questions directly in the IM window. It used short sentences from the Encarta website, and sometimes displays full articles in the Internet Explorer-based browser on the right. It also could complete simple mathematical and advanced algebra problems. This service was also available in German,[28] Spanish,[29] French[30] and Japanese.[31]
To read in full detail, please visit Encarta at wikipedia.
