Microsoft Creative Writer (1993) | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Creative Writer (1993)

en.wikipedia.org

51 pointsremoquete32 comments

Honestly, I was not a huge fan of 90s Microsoft, and I certainly never used this thing, but I really miss this kind of fun and whimsy and the bicycle-for-the-mind (even if you're only going to ride in circles in front of your house) quality of 80s-90s personal computing and desktop applications.

Their circa ~1995 3D Movie Maker was pretty cool, though.

Microsoft open sourced 3D Movie Maker a few months ago:

https://github.com/microsoft/Microsoft-3D-Movie-Maker

Microsoft Fine Artist is actually a very good educational tool.

Subtly teaching kids about vanishing points and perspective is genius, hats off to whichever team was responsible for it.

If this looked familiar to you but isn't quite the program you remember, you might have used Storybook Weaver (1994) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storybook_Weaver

I wonder if there's a market for a new word processor for children? When I volunteer in schools students seem to be made to use Google Docs or Office, which I imagine is initially overwhelming.

> I wonder if there's a market for a new word processor for children?

Undoubtedly.

...but not one that the market will pay actual money for, so you'll have to plaster it in ads - but having ads targeting children is unethical and/or illegal.

The market isn't the kids, it's the schools.

Counterpoint: Schools, and even the highest regarded institutions of higher-education in the world, seem to think that Blackboard is good software.

Back when I was in elementary school in the 1990s we learned word processing using the ClarisWorks office suite on 68k Performa 575 models running System 7. While nostalgia may be clouding my opinions, I do remember ClarisWorks being easy to use. We also had access to Apple eMate laptops which ran the same operating system as the Newton. They had a word processing application on them, and we'd use these laptops in class to type short reports, which we would later print and give to the teacher to grade. I forgot the name of the word processing application, though; it's been 21 years since elementary school and the last time I saw an eMate.

It was probably Newton Works: https://www.newted.org/download/manuals/0306284ANWWPUM.PDF (PDF User manual)

I've used Google Docs probably since I was 8 or 9, I don't remember it being particularly hard to pick up. Also, Google has Google Classroom which works best with Google Docs, so Google Docs is probably what's most common with kids.

> Both are now discontinued, but can still be acquired from online stores and auction websites such as eBay.

Sad that this will never be the case for any software released past like 2015. Now if/when the servers are shut off, that is it.

My dad used this to produce business documents for a long time before switching to Word.

My grandfather wrote his PhD thesis in Print Shop! Beat that!

I wrote my dissertation in cuneiform in only 9 months, which included time for each clay tablet to dry!

Damn you, HN, this seemed funny to me

You could write longform content in Print Shop?

Is that… a ribbon UI?

I grew up in the 90s and really loved software like Creative Writer, KidPix, 3D Movie Maker, etc.

What's the landscape like for kids today? Is it all mobile apps?

With my kids the popular creative tools are: Super Mario Maker (Switch), Game Builder Garage (Switch), Minecraft (everything). Book Creator, Procreate, GarageBand, Pages, Keynote and iMovie (iOS)

My kids end up using a mix of "kid friendly" software (especially when it relates to game making or coding) and regular software. The regular software they use typically relates to schoolwork and is usually on iPad: Procreate for drawing and painting, Google Docs or Pages for word processing. Book Creator / Keynote for class presentations

It seems like the kid-friendly software still exists, but has shifted from word processing and painting to coding and game making

> It seems like the kid-friendly software still exists, but has shifted from word processing and painting to coding and game making

Thankfully! I remember managing a classroom computer lab around 2010. The challenge was to get often buggy educational software from the mid-1990's to run under Windows XP, since the mid-1990's was when most of the software with any educational merit was developed. There were a handful of contemporary standouts, like Scratch and TuxPaint, but they were scarce. (The children may have loved KidPix, but it was nearly impossible to teach with since they were fixated with the animated effects.)

> The children may have loved KidPix, but it was nearly impossible to teach with since they were fixated with the animated effects.

KidsPix was the greatest :)

I'm sure those kids thought that TuxPaint was the greatest too. It's pretty easy to tell when something engages children since their work goes from meh to wow, a six year old did that?!

Oh, man, McZee. That creepy, purple, Hypnotoad-eyed waste of corporate imagination. Could it get more 90s than that?

...Apparently there was an expansion pack featuring PBS literacy icon, Ghostwriter! So yes, it could and did get more 90s than that.

Not sure this was on sale in the UK. Never heard of it. But I didn't know Bob in period, either. The internet has a great way of revealing entire back catalogues.

I had Creative Writer 1 as a kid in the UK

(supplied with a prebuilt PC)

my neighbours had Bob!

I have very fond memories of using Creative Writer and (more so) Fine Artist as a kid. Thanks for sharing this.

I was a huge fan of this when I was a kid.

My nostalgia resulted in me buying a copy from eBay when I was an adult!

I always loved the McZee character.

I also had Creative Writer 2 when I was child, but that wasn't as good (it lost a lot of the "fun").

The original Creative Writer is available to stream on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/WRITER_WIN

The Ghostwriter expansion pack was next fucking level. Clues hidden in documents to solve a mystery - one of my favorite early childhood software experiences.

I still have the 4 floppy disks (french version). I remember the sentence generator with random words that was really funny. The word processing interface had a ribbon-style toolbar with tabs and multiple "pages" that we can alternate by clicking on the lever.

Funny, I was also just reading about this due to the post about Jim Woodring on here.

I used to love this program as a kid. Thanks for bringing back some memories :)

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