Microsoft Reader is a discontinued

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

application for reading

e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...

s, first released in August 2000, that used its own .LIT format. It was available for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

computers and

Pocket PC A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile or Windows Embedded Compact operating system that has some of the abilities of modern desktop PCs. The name was introduced by Microsoft in 2000 ...

PDAs. The name was also used later for an unrelated application for reading

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

and XPS files, first released with

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...

- this app was discontinued in 2018.

E-book Reader

The e-book reader was available for download from Microsoft as a free application for computers running

and on PDAs running

, where it has been built into the ROM since

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

3.0. Microsoft Reader was compatible with

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...

, but was not supported on newer

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7 is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It received multiple large upda ...

devices. Microsoft Reader displays books in the .LIT (shortened from "literature") format, an extension of the

Microsoft Compressed HTML Help Microsoft Compiled HTML Help is a Microsoft proprietary online help format, consisting of a collection of HTML pages, an index and other navigation tools. The files are compressed and deployed in a binary format with the extension .CHM, for Com ...

format to include

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement militai ...

. These e-books can be purchased and downloaded from online stores. The notable features of Microsoft Reader are

ClearType ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for additi ...

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 plug-in for

text-to-speech Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal languag ...

, enabling books to be read out loud. Companies such as

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...

and

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

partnered with Microsoft to provide books in the format when released in 2000. 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.

Compatibility

Copy protection

Books accessible by Reader can be protected, or unprotected, only allowing access to protected books if the user has activated the software. This can be accomplished by registering using their

Passport A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...

account. Only six Reader installations can be activated per account, after which, Microsoft requires the user to request further activations.

Creating .LIT files

''Read in Microsoft Reader'' is an add-on, available from Microsoft, that can be used with Microsoft Word (versions 2000, 2002 and 2003) to create .LIT extension e-books. This software is not fully compatible with Office 2007.

Version history

Desktop

Pocket PC

Read in Microsoft Reader

Software Development Kit

Text to Speech

Third party

Notable third-party apps and tools to convert and read MS .LIT format on various devices include: *

Calibre In guns, particularly firearms, caliber (or calibre; sometimes abbreviated as "cal") is the specified nominal internal diameter of the gun barrel bore – regardless of how or where the bore is measured and whether the finished bore match ...

; an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

e-book library manager that runs on many environments; it can convert .LIT format files *

Lexcycle Stanza Lexcycle was a software company that made electronic book reading software. They were responsible for Stanza, which ran on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms. In April 2009, Lexcycle was acquired by Amazon.c ...

(discontinued); a freeware program for reading eBooks; can read .LIT format, supports

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

Document viewer

In 2012, Microsoft released a Microsoft Reader

Metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urba ...

-style app with

for reading documents in PDF, XPS and TIFF formats. Reader was included in

Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...

and was a free download from the

Windows Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps ...

for Windows 10. Support for

Windows 10 Mobile Windows 10 Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. First released in 2015, it is a successor to Windows Phone 8.1, but was marketed by Microsoft as being an edition of its PC operating system Windows 10. Wind ...

ended in 2016 in favor of opening PDF documents within

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...

browser. Microsoft discontinued the application in February 2018, as PDF reading functionality was moved to Edge on desktops as well.''Microsoft to discontinue its PDF Reader App in February 2018''
Windows Latest, 2017-11-21

References

{{Ebooks

Reader A reader is a person who reads. It may also refer to: Computing and technology * Adobe Reader (now Adobe Acrobat), a PDF reader * Bible Reader for Palm, a discontinued PDA application * A card reader, for extracting data from various forms of ...

Pocket PC software Electronic publishing Media readers Ebooks