Microsoft Office (1991) 339 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Office is a bundle of Microsoft's productivity application. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and later Mail, Office Manager, and Outlook. The "1.x" versions of Microsoft Office were simply a marketing bundle of the standalone products sold together with no other packaging changes. Even though these were distinct applications, rather than one single monolithic program, they shared a similar user interface, integrated well together and shared the ability to embed documents from one application in the documents of another.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0
• 4.2
• 4.3
• 95
• 97/98
• 2000
• XP (2002 Beta)

PageMaker (1987) 58 Publishing Windows OS2 MacOS

Aldus PageMaker, later Adobe PageMaker, is a desktop publishing program for Mac and Windows. First released in 1985, PageMaker was the first desktop publishing program for the Macintosh. It was followed over a year later with the release of 1.0 for the IBM PC. The PC version was a notable application as it was one of the few rare applications which would run under Windows 1.x. PC PageMaker 1.0 bundled a runtime version of Windows. This enabled MS-DOS users who had not decided to buy Windows to run PageMaker. Aldus skipped version 2.0 on the PC to bring version number in sync with the 3.0 Mac product.

• 1.00
• 1.0A
• 3.00
• 3.01
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 6.x

Microsoft FrontPage (1995) 42 Publishing Windows

Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor/Cuisinart for Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 97 (v2)
• 98 (v3)

CorelDraw! (1989) 35 Graphics Publishing Windows

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

• 1.x
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 6.0
• 7.0

Adobe Acrobat (1993) 28 Publishing Windows MacOS Unix

Adobe Acrobat, first released in 1993, is a tool for creating portable electronic documents. Its documents retain complex formatting when used across differing systems, so that they appear identical when viewed on screen or printed to a printer. Acrobat accomplishes this by encapsulating Adobe's PostSript printer language in to a document file format and offering the ability to embed fonts that are not present on the target system.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 23 Graphics Publishing Novelty DOS Windows

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

• 1.0 (DOS)
• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 6.0
• 8.0

The Print Shop (1984) 22 Publishing DOS Windows

The Print Shop is a home oriented publisher capable of creating calendars, banners, greeting cards and other printable goods. It started off on the Apple II and Commodore 64 where it became popular for its simplicity and ease of use. From day one, it featured interactive editing, on-screen artwork/layout selection, print previewing, and a library of customizable clipart.

• For IBM PC (DOS)
• The NEW PS (DOS)
• Deluxe
• Deluxe (Win)
• Deluxe 2.0 (Win)
• Deluxe III
• Premier 5.x (Win)
• Deluxe 6.0 (Win)
• Ensemble III
• 2002 (Mac)

Windows Media Center (2004) 20 Video Audio Media Player Windows

Windows Media Center was a full-screen media player and video recorder designed for use on home theater PCs. It competed against digital recording devices like the Tivo.

• 6.1 (7)
• 2005 (XP)

Microsoft Publisher (1991) 18 Publishing Windows

Publisher is a desktop publishing tool from Microsoft geared towards ease of use with the home user. Microsoft publisher can be used to created professional looking newsletters, flyers, forms, and more. It includes guides and wizards that walk users through creation of common document types, while still offering powerful flexibility.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 95 (3.0)
• 97 (4.0)
• 98 (5.0)

Micrografx Designer (1988) 11 Graphics Publishing Windows OS2

Micrografx Designer, originally released as IN-A-VISON for Windows 1.x, is a vector based drawing and design program. It features ease of use, multiple layers, and dimensioning. Micrografx also sold large libraries of clip art. It competed against Corel Draw.

• 1.1
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 3.1
• 4.0

Micrografx Picture Publisher (1990) 10 Graphics Publishing Windows

Formerly Astral Picture Publisher, Micrografx Picture Publisher is a bitmapped image editor for Windows that offered powerful and feature rich 24-bit color image editing on the Microsoft Windows platform prior to Photoshop for Windows. Picture Publisher was briefly considered the leading image editor on the Microsoft Windows platform until Adobe made Photoshop available for Windows.

• 2.x
• 3.1
• 4.0
• 5.0
• LE
• 6.0

QuarkXPress (1986) 8 Publishing DOS Windows

QuarkXPress was THE standard publishing software during the 1990s. However it failed to update its product line to newer technologies in a timely manager, charged insane amounts for updates or additional features that should have been built in to the software, and became very abusive to their customers. Later versions required a parallel port/ADB copy protection dongle. They lost most of their market share to Adobe InDesign.

• 3.x
• 4.0

Ventura Publisher (1986) 8 Publishing DOS Windows

Ventura Publisher, originally from Xerox, is a professional desktop publishing program for the GEM graphical environment and later Windows. It has the distinction of being the first popular publishing program for the IBM PC platform. It competed with Aldus PageMaker, which initially was more popular on the Mac platform. There are also versions for Mac and OS/2.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 2.0
• 3.0 for DOS-GEM
• 3.0 for Windows
• 4.0 for Windows
• 4.1.x for Windows
• 4.2

The Print Shop Companion (1984) 7 Graphics Publishing DOS

As the name suggests, the Print Shop Companion is a companion product to The Print Shop. It contains extra miscellaneous functionality such as graphics editors and envelope printing.

• For IBM PC (DOS)
• The NEW PSC (DOS)
• Deluxe

QuickTime (1996) 7 Video Audio Media Player Windows

QuickTime is Apple's Image, Video and Audio framework. QuickTime is freely redistributable, and is provided here only as a convenience. Some applications on Winworld may require that this software be installed first.

• 2.x
• 4.x

WinPlay (1997) 6 Audio Media Player Windows

WinPlay3 was the first real-time MP3 audio player for PCs running Windows.

• 2.3b5

Cakewalk (1993) 6 Audio DOS Windows

Cakewalk is a MIDI music authoring and editing tool. The earlier versions are considered among the best MIDI tools that ever existed. Microsoft Windows. limited music notation and a built-in scripting language called CAL (Cakewalk Application Language). limited functionality OEM-bundled "Express" editions.

• 5.0 (DOS)
• 2.x
• 3.x

ClarisWorks (1991) 5 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Publishing Database Windows MacOS

ClarisWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool from Claris. In 1998, after version 5.0.2, ClairsWorks was purchased by Apple and re-branded under the "AppleWorks" name. It is not related to the Apple II AppleWorks product.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

GEM Desktop Publisher (1988) 5 Publishing DOS

GEM Desktop Publisher, from Digital Research, is a GEM 3.x based Desktop publishing program. It is not as sophisticated as Ventura Publisher. It uses a VMM (Virtual Memory Manager) in place of EMS/XMS, and requires a hard disk. It can be used with GEM Artline to provide illustrations.

• 2.x

Adobe InDesign (1999) 5 Publishing Windows

Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing tool that replaced Aldus/Adobe PageMaker. Initially it competed with Quark XPress

• 1.0
• 1.5
• 2.0

Adobe PressReady (1999) 5 Publishing Windows

Adobe PressReady is a professional printing and proofing tool that was aimed for selected inkjet printers to allow better color reproduction from screen to print. Requires Windows 95/98 with at least 48 MB RAM, otherwise NT 4.0 with 64 MB RAM. Supported printer models were: Canon BJC-8500, Epson Stylus Color 800, 850, 1520, and 3000, and HP DeskJet 895C, 1120C, and 2000C. The choice of printers were supposedly what inkjet printers graphic designers were using at the time.

• 1.0

The Print Shop PressWriter (1997) 4 Publishing Windows

The Print Shop PressWriter, from Broderbund, is a desktop publishing tool aimed at novice users. It comes with a simplified selection of pre-defined templates for newsletters, flyers, reports, resumes, brochures, and booklets. It includes a selection of extra fonts and clipart. It competed against PrintMaster Gold. Some versions were bundled with The Print Shop Deluxe for Windows.

• 1.0

FreeHand (1988) 3 Graphics Publishing Windows

FreeHand is a vector based drawing program used to create illustrations. It is similar to CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator. Initially it offered more features and flexibility than illustrator. It was created by Altsys, sold through Aldus, then sold to Macromedia, and then finally was assimilated by Adobe. Later versions repositioned itself as a content creation system for the web through Flash. The final version was Freehand MX (version 11) in 2003.

• 3.1
• 4.0
• 5.0

FrameMaker (1990) 3 Publishing Windows Unix MacOS

FrameMaker, originally from Frame Technology Corporation and later Adobe, is a professional document system for creating large, complex documents with highly structured layout. It was often accompanied by FrameReader.

• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.0

Microsoft Greetings (1997) 3 Publishing Novelty Windows

Microsoft Greetings is a greeting card maker for Microsoft Windows 9x/NT. It was made in conjunction with Hallmark.

• Workshop 2.0
• 99 (3.0)