History
The first product, NFolio 1.2, was shipped in September 1988 as part of Novell NetWare. Users typing "help" at any DOS prompt on a Novell network were presented with the online NetWare manuals in Folio Infobase format. Over the years, Folio continued to spread as part of Novell's NetWare, to an estimated 25 million desktops.
NFolio allowed users to view information received from multiple sources, add personal notes to that information, and create a personal "infobase" (information database) that could be shared and easily used by others. NFolio also allowed fast indexing using a feature that automatically indexed every word in an infobase. With the release of version 2 of NFolio in March 1989, NFolio was renamed to Folio Views 1.0.
In March 1990, Folio released Folio Views 1.3 with a new feature named Folio Legal Views that allowed creation and indexing of legal dispositions and other legal documents, using what was called DepoPrep.
In July 1990, Folio released Folio Views 2.0 with 100 new features, including new types of hypertext links, "hyperlinks", within a single document and across several documents, and links to external applications, graphics, sounds, and animation.
It was in 1990 that Paul Allen and Dan Taggart, two graduates of BYU, created Infobases, Inc., and began offering LDS church publications on computer floppy disks. They chose to use Folio Views as their infobase indexing and presentation technology, since Allen was familiar with it, having worked at Folio Corporation since that company's founding in 1987. Folio was co-founded by Paul Allen's brother Curt Allen, and by his brother-in-law Brad Pelo. Using Folio technology seemed a natural way to offer LDS publications as a business venture.
In March 1991, Folio released MailBag, an infobase application that stored and retrieved electronic mail messages on a Novell LAN.
Folio Views 2.1 was released in June 1991. Included was Folio Views Personal Edition, which allowed users to search, annotate, edit, group, link and output information on their personal computers. This was the company's first MS-DOS program.
The Electronic Labyrinth described Folio Views 2.1 as follows: "a document indexing and retrieval package for DOS text mode. In the terminology of this software nodes are folios and collections of folios are infobases. An infobase consists of the original text plus full text indexing. The total file size is about half that of the original text, due to some clever file compression. Folio refers to this as "underhead" technology. The searching facility is powerful, supporting Booleans, wildcards, and proximity criteria. Reference links may be made to other folios, external programs, PCX graphics, or audio files in RealSound format. Nodes may be grouped in clusters to facilitate organization and comparisons between groups. Text editing features include block operations and highlighting. Over forty file formats may be imported; 2GB of text may be stored in all. The interface is based on a window paradigm and supports a mouse. On-line help is available. Folio Views is priced at $695. A personal edition, which has full functionality but cannot create new infobases, is $295. The runtime module allows read-only access. An unlimited not-for-profit license is $1995." As of 2000, all Folio DOS programs had been retired.
Read more about this topic: Folio Corporation
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