Encarta's standard edition[19] includes approximately 50,000 articles, with additional images, videos and sounds. The premium editions contain over 62,000 articles and other multimedia content, such as 25,000 pictures and illustrations, over 300 videos and animations, and an interactive atlas with 1.8 million locations. Its articles are integrated with multimedia content and may have a collection of links to websites selected by its editors. Encarta's articles in general are less lengthy and more summarized than the printed version of Encyclopaedia Britannica or the online Wikipedia. Like most multimedia encyclopedias, Encarta's articles tend to provide an overview of the subject rather than an exhaustive coverage and can only be viewed one at a time.
A sidebar may display alternative views, essays, journals or original materials relevant to the topic. For example, when reading about computers, it features annals since 1967 of the computer industry. Encarta also supports closed captioning for the hearing impaired. A separate program, called Encarta Research Organizer was included in early versions for gathering and organizing information and constructing a Word document-based report. Later versions included Encarta Researcher which was a browser plugin to organize information from Encarta articles and web pages into research projects. Content copied from Encarta is appended with a copyright boilerplate message after the selection. The user interface allows viewing content with only images, videos, sounds, animations, 360-degree views, virtual tours, charts and tables or only interactivities.
Encarta 2000 and later have Map Treks which are tours of geographic features and concepts. Microsoft had a separate product known as Encarta Africana which was an encyclopedia of black history and culture. It was integrated into the standard Encarta Reference suite starting with the 2001 version.[20] Encarta 2002 and onwards feature 3D Virtual Tours of ancient structures, for example the Acropolis; 2D panoramic images of world wonders or major cities; and a virtual flight feature which allows users to fly a virtual airplane over a coarsely generated artificial landscape area. Version 2002 also introduced the ability to install the entire encyclopedia locally to the hard disk drive to prevent frequent swapping of discs.
Encarta 2003 incorporated literature guides and book summaries, foreign language translation dictionaries, a Homework Center and Chart Maker. Encarta's Visual Browser, available since the 2004 version, presents a user with a list of related topics making them more discoverable. A collection of 32 Discovery Channel videos have also since been added. Encarta 2005 introduced another program called Encarta Kids aimed at children to make learning fun.
Encarta also includes a trivia game called "MindMaze" (accessible through Ctrl+Z) in which the player explores a castle by answering questions whose answers can be found in the encyclopedia's articles. There is also a Geography Quiz and several other games and quizzes, some quizzes also in Encarta Kids.
For years, Encarta came in three primary software editions: Basic, Premium, and Reference Library (price and features in that order.) Beginning with Encarta 2006, however, when Websters Multimedia took over its maintenance, Encarta became a feature of Microsoft Student as the premier Microsoft educational software program. Although it is possible to purchase only the Encarta encyclopedia separately, Microsoft Student bundles together Encarta Premium with Microsoft Math (a graphing calculator program) and Learning Essentials, which provides templates for Microsoft Office. In addition, the Reference Library was discontinued, absorbed into a newer, more comprehensive Premium package. Encarta's user interface is shared with Microsoft Student, and has been streamlined to reduce clutter with only a Search box which returns relevant results; however it is no longer possible to simply browse all the encyclopedia articles alphabetically.
World Atlas
The dynamic maps are generated with the same engine that powered Microsoft MapPoint software. The map is a virtual globe that one can freely rotate and magnify to any location down to major streets for big cities. The globe has multiple surfaces displaying political boundaries, physical landmarks, historical maps and statistical information. One can selectively display statistical values on the globe surface or in a tabular form, different sized cities, various geological or man-made features and reference lines in a map.
The maps contain hyperlinks to related articles ("Map Trek") and also supports a "Dynamic Sensor" that provides the latitude, longitude, place name, population and local time for any point on the globe. Encarta also generates a visible-light moon atlas with names of major craters and hyperlinks. However, it does not include a planetarium, but instead has a small interactive constellation-only map. In addition to database generated maps, many other illustrative maps in Encarta ("Historical Maps") are drawn by artists. Some more advanced maps are interactive: for example, the large African map for Africana can display information such as political boundaries or the distribution of African flora.
Encarta Dictionary
When Encarta was released as part of the "Reference Suite" in 1998 (through to 2000), Microsoft bundled "Microsoft Bookshelf" with the other programs (Encarta Encyclopedia 98 Deluxe Edition, Encarta Desk Atlas, Encarta Virtual Globe 98, Encarta World English Dictionary and Encarta Research Organizer). However, this was redundant.
Bookshelf was discontinued in 2000, and in later Encarta editions (Encarta Suite 2000 and onwards), Bookshelf was replaced with a dedicated Encarta Dictionary, a superset of the printed edition.
There was some controversy over the decision, since the dictionary lacks the other books provided in Bookshelf which many found to be a useful reference, such as Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (replaced with a quotations section in Encarta that links to relevant articles and people) and an Internet Directory (although now a moot point since many of the sites listed in offline directories no longer exist).
Regional versions
Robert McHenry, while Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica, criticized[21] Encarta for differences in factual content between national versions of Encarta, accusing Microsoft of "pandering to local prejudices" instead of presenting subjects objectively.[22] An article written by Bill Gates addressed the nature of writing encyclopedia for different regions.
