Tool-built titles are created using a specialized tool, or set of authoring tools, that provide the basic building blocks and framework for creating an application. These tools can be used by non-programmers, though some programming knowledge generally helps.
Authoring tools are typically best suited for content-rich applications—those loaded with text, images, and sound. Because they are specialized for data delivery, they are often not as flexible or efficient as programming languages. Their benefits lie in their ease of use, fast development cycles, predictable characteristics, and reliability.
The MDK includes the Multimedia Viewer authoring tool. Viewer was designed primarily to develop mainly text-based titles, however, it does support images, animation, and audio. Viewer requires Microsoft Word for Windows to create the source files for the title. You then use these source files to build a title for display with the Viewer runtime engine.
The Multimedia Viewer Developer's Guide describes the capabilities of the Multimedia Viewer and explains how to use it to build multimedia titles.