Microsoft Reader was a Microsoft program for the reading of e-books, originally released in August 2000.
Microsoft Reader is available for download from Microsoft as a free program for computers running Windows. It can also be used on a Pocket PC, where it has been built into the ROM since Windows CE 3.0. Microsoft Reader is not supported on newer Windows Phone 7 devices, but it is compatible with Windows Mobile.
Microsoft Reader displays books in the .LIT (shortened from "literature") format, an extension of the Microsoft Compressed HTML Help format to include DRM. These books can be purchased and downloaded from many smaller online stores.
The notable features of Microsoft Reader are ClearType for increased readability on small screens, highlighting and doodling designed for quick note-taking, text notes, and searching. The PC version also has an optional plugin for text-to-speech, enabling books to be read out loud.
In August 2011, Microsoft announced they were discontinuing both Microsoft Reader and the use of the .lit format for ebooks at the end of August 2012, and ending sales of the format on November 8, 2011.
Read more about Microsoft Reader: Compatibility, Copy Protection, Creating .LIT Files, Third Party
Famous quotes containing the word reader:
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)