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
skunkworks 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,
[5] 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.
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.