Bitstream Software - EyeBrowse FAQ

When was EyeBrowse started?

The original version of EyeBrowse was born in September 1998, created by Kristan Dyson. He had just began to learn programming in Visual Basic 5, with the help of a book. One of the exercises in the book was to create a simple graphic viewer. Kristan followed this through, creating the primitive (but educational) 'Image Browser'. This was the first version of Image Browser ever, although it was a long time after before the name EyeBrowse was used.

How did Image Browser develop into the EyeBrowse of today?

After sending EyeBrowse to friends, Kris realised that the program had potential beyond an exercise. He received plenty of feedback about it, people seemed to like it even though it was so simple and featureless. His efforts were driven by this feedback, mostly the negative feedback from his friend Paul, to create something better each time. Eventually Kris got so sick of the constant complaints about the awful interface from Paul that he said, "Alright then, you do it for me". Paul created a better interface and designed graphics for it and then Kristan incorporated them into his program. The improvement was dramatic, just the change of the interface made using the program so much easier and more enjoyable. Kris invited Paul to work more and more on it until they became a team. They now have equal responsibilities - Kris still handles all the programming and Paul makes graphics, designs the interface and this website, as well as promoting Bitstream and EyeBrowse. Through plenty of hard work and co-operation, Kris and Paul have bettered EyeBrowse, and shall continue to do so into the future. See the history page for more about EB's history. It should be noted though that Paul has now left us to work on other projects - we wish him well.

What programs are used in the creation of EyeBrowse?

Kris programs EyeBrowse entirely using Microsoft's Visual Basic 5. Paul uses Paint Shop Pro 5 for the graphics, VB5 for the interface and Microsoft's FrontPage 98 for this website.

Will EyeBrowse always be freeware?

We have created EyeBrowse working under the policy of providing quality freeware to all Windows 95/98 users around the world. It is our mission to keep EyeBrowse entirely free to use and distribute. We believe there is not enough high-quality freeware out there today, people always get greedy when they make something good, we intend to keep EyeBrowse freeware however good it gets, at sacrifice of much of our time and with enormous effort on our part.

Whats in the future for EyeBrowse?

The future of EyeBrowse is looking good. We have new ideas for it almost daily and these are constantly being implemented into future versions of EB. We are planning to keep developing for some time to come, in the hope of it becoming the next Winamp (dream on guys!). When we feel EyeBrowse is approaching its final stages of development (not for some time yet), we shall probably turn our attention to our next major project, currently titled 'Media Manager'. Media Manager has now been written off as our next project, we have many other ideas, such as Webtime, Text Keeper and other small utilities.