Multiplan 1.x
Multiplan 1.x
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Multiplan 1.x
Multiplan 1.x
WinWorld is an online museum dedicated to providing free and open access to one of the largest archives of abandonware software and information on the web.
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Microsoft did port Multiplan for DOS to Microsoft Windows these was first Application for Windows. Microsoft Windows 1.00 at time was known as interface Manager. Microsoft Interface Manger did have specialize version of Microsoft Multiplan, Word, Chart these versions was different than DOS Versions. It will be nice if we find Microsoft Interface Manager some day.
Where do you find a reference to new versions of applications? As far as I have been able to find out, the Interface Manager offering was little more than a mock-up with the possibility of a demonstration of a multitasker sharing the menu design with the other MS products. Word for DOS could be in a graphical mode so the shared display would have to be in graphical mode and that means that Interface Manager may have looked like a character screen but it would have been technically a GUI.
Well, it seems there was in fact a Windows version of Multiplan developed at some point, as it can be seen in this photo from a French computer magazine:
This appears to be close to the January 1985 Alpha. The application on the right is titled Windows Plan and looks almost exactly like the Macintosh Multiplan. This is the only time Windows Plan is seen as far as I can tell, though. Perhaps it was cancelled in favour of Excel, which replaced Multiplan on the Macintosh later that year.
Given the usual level chicanery in these demos, is there any evidence that it is not a demonstration program that displays a grid given a sham menu? Most demos of live spreadsheet programs included loaded data in the cells, to show off formatting options if nothing else.
That's entirely possible, I just wanted to point out how closely it resembles the Macintosh Multiplan, down to capitalization in menu items. So whatever it was, I think it was clearly modeled after that, just like the original demo from 1983 looked like the DOS version of Multiplan.
I'm fairly sure that is just a mockup. There are various programming samples included with some of the pre-releases.
For example, if you look at the 1983 "Windows" they have Windows applications with the names "Word", "Plan", and "Chart", but they clearly never do anything more than display some pre-programmed content. If you look closely, it even says "Multiplan".
I found a Another Microsoft Multiplan Ad. This Ad appear to be from 1983 Byte Magazine. Box say Microsoft Multi-Tool Finical Statement. This the software was looking for it is name under Multi-Tool like Multi-Tool Word and Multi-Tool Notepad. It seen to be run on Multiplan MultiPlan
There was also Microsoft Multi-Tool Budget, which made use of Multiplan.
This is a photo of one that had been on eBay a way while back.
There were a lot of names for the Multiplan canned templates. Bad for collectors.
PC Magazine has an article (Mar 6, 1984) which reviewed updated versions now known simply as Microsoft Budget and Microsoft Finance from the distinctly unwieldy Microsoft Multi-Tool Financial Statement Expert System and Microsoft Multi-Tool Budget Expert System. The use of Expert in the names had a very short run.
I think there was another change in 1986 or 87 which made it clear that the product was an add-on to Multiplan but I am having troubling confirming it.
In 1983 late Microsoft change Multi-Tool name to generic name like Word, Notepad and Windows. Microsoft Finance and Microsoft Budget it hard to find Software Their was spotted on Ebay while back. The sellers on ebay probably a lot money for it. One day hope we find this software and a lot Microsoft software like Microsoft Interface Manager.
I don't think we are going to find the Microsoft Interface Manager. If we found it. The price would be really high. But I think we won't find it since it's too rare. And probably we, will never see a copy of the Interface Manager.
Betawiki Windows 1.0 Page Quote
In 1981, the Apps division of Microsoft (Microsoft had two primary divisions during this time - "Systems" and "Apps", for systems software and application development respectively) began to develop a common interface library for all of the productivity applications being developed within the division at the time (mostly Word and the Multiplan spreadsheet). This went by several names, notably MUSH (Microsoft User SHell) and Interface Manager, and is an entirely text-mode UI framework signified by the "session control" strip with context-specific commands at the bottom of the screen. There were also brief plans for a "visual shell" using this UI to be shipped using DOS 2.0, but these were scrapped before the final release. Variants of the MUSH/Interface Manager interface would ship in DOS Word 1.0 and Multiplan in 1982 and 1983, after the development of the Windows product had already begun.
At the same time that Interface Manager was being developed, a European standards committee was developing a standard for computer graphics, known as GKS. Microsoft wished to create a software product that would implement this standard on top of MS-DOS in a device-independent manner; Microsoft hired a developer to start this endeavour at the beginning of 1982, with another being transferred from Compiled Basic to assist with shrinking the code down later (mostly by converting it from C to assembly to meet the memory limitations of early IBM PCs) later that year. This project was dubbed GDI (Graphics Device Independence), later renamed to Graphics Device Interface, initially focusing on vector graphics.
It was eventually decided in the middle of 1982 to merge the Interface Manager and GDI teams into one team to develop a GUI-based package with device-independent graphics drawing, which gradually evolved into a (mostly) fully-fledged operating system with its own API and executable format. Initially this was called "Microsoft Window Manager"; a series of mockups and demo applications designed to resemble the final product ("Demonstration Version 0.01") was shown off to BYTE Magazine in September of 1983 under this name, featuring overlapping windows and showcasing both "cooperative" and "uncooperative" DOS applications that directly modified video memory