Chapter 9 Assembling the Pieces - Authoring Tools

The selection of an authoring tool to create your multimedia application is probably one of the most critical decisions in the development cycle. This tool must be matched to the type of application and the talents and resources of the development team. Since the multimedia Windows environment is still in its infancy, you are hardly overwhelmed with options. However, there is an interesting variety of tools with adequate diversity and quality to satisfy most requirements.

This chapter describes three unique Windows-based authoring tools, and the characteristics that make each suitable for particular types of applications.

Asymetrix ToolBook

OWL Guide

Authorware Professional

All of these tools support 256-color images, waveform audio, MIDI, and animation, through Microsoft multimedia extensions to Windows 3.0. Additionally, they are designed to run on the base MPC. Each company has agreed to release their final product or otherwise make the runtime engines available to MPC title developers at machine launch in 1991.