Wikipedia:WikiBrowse

WikiProjects – WikiBrowse is a set of Open Source tools designed to navigate Wikipedia and other MediaWikis using Windows. It has been designed by Dilshan R Jayakody and a group of Delphi, C++ and Java developers. The first version of WikiBrowse was announced on August 27, 2006 and the first beta version (Version 1.0.0.1064) is available to download since August 30, 2006. WikiProject - WikiBrowse is a collection of tools and each version contains WikiBrowser ( Media Wiki Navigator Tool ), WikiResearch ( Wikipedia, and other media-wiki based research tool ), and a collection of Windows Shell utilities known as a WikiSearch. WikiProjects – WikiBrowse is designed to work only with Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, and later versions. Developers may not ask anything about Windows 9x and ME editions.

WikiBrowse
WikiBrowse is a core component of WikiProject system and the entire package version is derived from its build number. Compared with other Windows browsers, WikiBrowse's most outstanding feature is its skinned user interface and smooth MDI (Multiple Document Interface) implementation. WikiBrowse maintains single instance for each media-wiki. So there are 8 separate tabs for Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikispecies and Wikisource and three additional pages for Welcome screen, WikiBrowse Media Player and for WikiBrowse Primary Help. This tabbed architecture provides simultaneous access to all media wikis, but the main disadvantage of this option is its huge memory capacity. WikiBrowse Version 1 does not have support for Unicode but, according to the developers, Version 1.0.1 and later releases support Unicode standards. WikiBrowse also has a media player to play all the Wikipedia videos and audios. Media Player is implemented using illiminable’s ogg codec’s and Windows Media.

WikiResearch
WikiResearch is Wikipedia based research tool for Windows. This tool is designed to collect and organize Wikipedia (or other media-wiki) articles, resources (such as images or videos), Deploy research contents and to manage research data (such as setting up the data priorities, comments, notes, etc). Most of the parts of WikiResearch is implemented as a Windows Shell components, (such as with Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, Task Manager, etc). For example Using WikiResearch Internet Explorer - Support Bar, user save current web page using single mouse click, and using WikiResearch context menu shortcut, users add selected files to the WikiResearch easily.

WikiSearch
WikiSearch is not a single program. It is a collection of shell tools specially implemented to provide easy navigation to Wikipedia or other media-wikis. WikiSearch utilities can be located at,


 * WikiSearch Find Applet : This tool is located at “Search” section of Windows Start Menu.
 * WikiSearch Explorer Tool Bar : Click View > Explorer Bar > WikiBrowse Tools to show / hide this utility.
 * WikiQuick Launch Bar : Dockable tool bar resides on Windows Desktop and provide links to all the WikiProject utilities. This implementation is same as the earlier Microsoft Office Tool Bar. (User needs to configure this at the installation or from the WikiBrowse.)

Features and Usability
WikiProject has been designed to view the broad range files / documents used by media-wikis. Since it is tightly integrated with the operating system, WikiProject use Windows Shell Interfaces for most of their utilities.

Support Files and Document Types
WikiProject is based on a Web Browser. So it supports all the file formats supported by the Web Browser (Web Browse could be either Internet Explorer or Mozilla Base.), In addition to that WikiBrowse supports following file formats,


 * Image File Types : TIFF images, GFI fax images, SGI images, Autodesk images files, Truevision images, ZSoft Paintbrush images, Word 5.x screen capture files, Kodak Photo-CD images, Portable pixel/gray map images, Dr. Halo images, CompuServe GIF images, SGI Wavefront images, Standard Windows bitmap images, Photoshop images, Paintshop Pro images and Portable network graphic images.
 * Video and Audio File Types : OGG VORBIS, SPEEX, THEORA, FLAC, MP3, Windows Media Audio and Video, DVD Files ( need decoder support ), AVI, WAV, MIDI, AU and AIFF files.
 * WikiProjects – WikiResearch has its own file format known as a wrp (WikiResearch Project) to store user research data.

WikiResearch Pack n Go Option
WikiResearch Pack n Go is a special utility to deploy WikiResearch Projects. This utility compress selected Research Project in to Windows executable file and provides free execution (without using any WikiProject application utility) on target computer.

Internet Explorer and Mozilla Distributions
According to the WikiBrowse Developers they are working for two versions of WikiBrowse. First version is based on Internet Explorer and other is based on Mozilla ActiveX Control. Internet Explorer based versions are now available to download from their home page, but the Mozilla based version is still not released from their home page. Main reason to delay Mozilla version of WikiBrowse is the incompleteness of Mozilla ActiveX Control Project.

Development Information
WikiProjects – WikiBrowse is developed mainly using Delphi programming language. All of the source code is available to download at the WikiProjects home page or at the WikiProject section of Sourceforge.net. Help and Documentation is currently developing by the separate team known as "WikiProject documentation Team", and they are using Microsoft HTML Help Compiler to implement the help system. WikiProject – WikiBrowse home page is also implemented by the documentation team, but the home page uploading is carrying out by the WikiBrowse Development Team. According to the WikiBrowse Help, there are two project administrators in this project, one administrator is responsible for WikiProject Development and other administrator is responsible for project documentation. All the WikiProject binaries (except Illiminable’s ogg codec’s) are released under the terms of GNU General Public License. Documents and Home Page contents are released under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. Illiminable’s ogg codec’s are distributed by their (Illiminable’s) own license type