Encarta vs WorldBook vs Britannica

    The death of multimedia software has been the worst thing to happen to computing. Now our hyper-powerful phones and computers cannot access information without needing a connection to the internet, essentially rendering them useless. However, in the old days, multimedia software was at its peak. One of the most common uses of multimedia software were encyclopedia programs. I have collected three of them, finding the most recent version—my personal favorite Microsoft’s Encarta (2009), World Book (2013), and Britannica (2015). Now, two of these encyclopedias still exist: World Book in print form and Britannica in subscription form but only online. I don’t understand why they can’t sell a digital offline copy now, but I digress.

    This comparison will cover two things: the articles on certain topics that I am familiar with—U.S. and technology history—and I will be comparing them for accuracy as well as how in-depth they are. Multimedia features, essentially what makes this better than a physical encyclopedia, are their interactive maps and games. Does it have a nice collection of videos and photos? Is the design good? Is the text legible and easy to read? Does the software look good, as well as its randomness? One of the major problems with Wikipedia today is that you can’t really find articles about random topics.

    For fairness, each encyclopedia will be reviewed using the “adult” version, not the kids’ version. Encarta’s interface is pretty basic compared to World Book’s and Britannica’s, with just nine (eight if you take away the kids’ link) pages on the home screen. 

Clicking the history link, you can see folders for history in alphabetical order. It is very effective and reminds me of a folder system on a computer. Clicking on the article about the U.S. Civil War, you get presented with a bunch of drop-down links and my personal favorite—sidebars and old news articles—so you can find context around an event.

    Encarta has great multimedia as well, with the full national anthems of all countries (U.S. one linked here) as well as pictures and videos in articles

 

Apollo 13 Video Encarta

At the bottom of the articles, you get book and web recommendations, and because most don’t use Encarta’s servers, the sites are still online, but you have to copy and paste the links and it uses Encarta redirect servers.

World Book opens up in Fullscreen and despite being 4 years older cannot split screen on the home screen like Encarta does. You are presented with a weird water interface that makes the scrolling timeline kind of jiggly and with links on both halves of the screen, giving it a high-tech/spy-movie feel. You are presented with regal/important-sounding music, but instead of “Looking,” it gives you, ummm… some less-important-sounding music. Clicking “Just Looking” gives you access to random articles or even tools like this cool interest formula calculator that works completely offline with cool animations. 

    However, it shows a problem that is in this encyclopedia, which is it has no knowledge of space. The calculator maybe takes up 25% of the screen, but the rest is just the blue water background. WB does this for maps, games—everything. It’s like computers used to be 75% smaller back then or something. Clicking “Topics” opens up a search bar and you can search the articles, so it’s a little bit less easy to just browse than Encarta; however, there is an alphabetical search as well just like it would be in a real encyclopedia. In its article on the U.S. Civil War, there is a video about Abraham Lincoln, a map of the USA, along with some other paintings and photographs, and it seems pretty in-depth though without the drop-down menus like Encarta. At the bottom, there are some book recommendations and the web pages are at the top. Some of the links do work. Though the dedicated “What’s Online” weblinks seem broken (a webcam that is dated to 2018), the World Book file downloads are broken—though, for the record, if they worked, they seem so cool, like a way to access the internet without a browser, kind of spy-movie-esque when you have to use a program to download info from the internet.

Finally, Britannica has a very 2011 vibe to it despite being from 2015. It has a scrolling bar at the bottom of the page but with a very old-looking background. However, it does support tabs so you can have multiple articles open at the same time, which is cool. You again have A-Z file search like a physical encyclopedia would have, as well as a very tiny search bar that reminds me of the early days of the web. Honestly, Britannica reminds me of a web browser from 2003–2007. Its article on the U.S. Civil War seems very detailed and had half a page dedicated to external sources including documentaries and novels, as well as basic multimedia support.

    Encarta takes the slight lead as it seems to be the best-laid-out encyclopedia with links in its articles as well as still being detailed. Now onto the multimedia category. I loaded the article about the United States to test this out, and Britannica will take the early lead because while Encarta’s version of the U.S. anthem is better than the Britannica one, Britannica has full media controls. You can pause, rewind, fast-forward, and change the volume, while in Encarta you can only play and pause. World Book only has a few seconds of the anthem, which is just sad in my opinion.

Encarta strikes back though with the best maps and interactive atlases. Technically all three atlases are “interactive,” with you being able to click on countries and bodies of water to read about them, like the Gulf of America Mexico (it’s 2009–2015)—which also means that the U.S. technically doesn’t have a national language in any of the articles. Encarta’s atlas has fun statistics like cellphones per 1000 people. Britannica and WB atlases both suck. World Book is a bit more detailed but very laggy and not as interactive as Encarta’s, though it did allow me to zoom into the Houston Galleria and see a pic of it, whereas Britannica only let me zoom into Houston. Both don’t use the full screen (Britannica’s is technically fuller).

However, Britannica is no slouch. The “Explore” tab provides the same world data Encarta does but in table form as well as providing videos as well (though they are low quality—they look 240p). There is also a multimedia tab on the left that searches for photos and videos when you’re searching a topic. Britannica also has this cool timeline feature that gives an animated timeline of events you can read about. Honestly looks next-gen and high-tech, kind of like Konnect HQ-esque but with a more historical vibe. Encarta would be the overwhelming victor here if the games and panoramas worked, but the 3D tours work, the maps and globes are 1000x better, so slight win for Encarta on multimedia.

this is just criminal 

For technological information, I will give the tie to World Book and Britannica, though their 2-word article on Samsung is infuriating, almost as much as Encarta’s lack of information about it. Britannica seems to be as in-depth on historical and technical matter, while Encarta is good for things up until the early 2000s, though there was not a dedicated article about landlines for some reason.

    Encarta feels more “modern,” and while I thought I would like that, it doesn’t have the same high-tech feel as WB or Britannica. Britannica has tabs which are amazing for serious researchers, and the layout feels more high-tech (the teen layout gives iCarly vibes, which is so cool). World Book also replicates this, and while it seems lacking in the multimedia department and the most broken by its discontinuation, it does have cool calculators and converters. In a shock, I think I will give Britannica the slight lead with Encarta a close second (though it is the multimedia and legibility king) and World Book third. If you know of any other multimedia encyclopedias, please let me know. And if you want a more in-depth comparison, tell me in the comments.