Quikview

Quick View is a variety of computer programs that quickly display files. Historically, it has been described as Quikview without the “C”. This word is prone to spread, so let's trace its origins. The first to omit the “C” appears to be an expansion board for the 1982 Motorola 68000 used for computer typesetting. It then appeared in 1989 as a program for Atari.

Quick View 1.0 on Atari ST (1989)

The 1989 journal of The Milwaukee Area Atari Users Group introduced a text display program called Quikview. According to Atarimania, The Quick View for Atari released in 1989 was a text viewer. It is probably the same one.

The following is a reproduction of the description screen.

Quick View 1.0
When viewing a file, the cursor keys can be used to scroll through the file. Alphanumeric keys are unesed. F1 - pageb up F3 - top of file F2 - page down F4 - end of file Use the ESC key to exit View mode. Usethe Quick Print accessory to generate text-only screen dumps.

• Atari ST Quick View (Atarimania)
• Dennis Wilson. "MilAtari Limited Edition (MilAtari Ltd. Edition)", Vol. VIII, No.71, June 1989, p.7.

Dr. Bob's .IMG Quick View on Atari ST (1989)

It is described as “View (mono only) IMG files, very fast.”

• Dr. Bob's .IMG Quick View (AtariUpToDate)

QuikView on Apple2000 (1991)

TimeOut-Central is a series of 3.5-inch disks published by Resource-Central. This appears to be a product for TimeOut that runs on AppleWorks. One of these apps for TimeOut is QuikView. This opens an AppleWorks word processor file. This is also a text viewer, as the sample includes “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.

• Peter Stark. "Apple2000", Vol.6 No.5, October 1991, pp.23-24.

Quick View on Windows (1993?)

It was included in Windows as a file viewer. In the window title, it was “Quick View” and the file name was without the “C”. %SystemRoot%\system32\Viewers\Quikview.exe Title bar of the Japanese version is “クイック ビューア” (Quick Viewer).

Common files supported by Quick View on Windows 95. Other files that we don't see now are also supported.

Type	Extentions
Document	.txt .doc .ppt .rtf .xls
Image	.bmp .gif .tiff
Program	.exe .dll .inf .ini

• omimi 『Windows95 テクニカル・ガイド』1996. via いにしえのクイックビューア

When targeting BMP files, the first site's BMPs are readable, but the second site's images are not.

• Sample BMP files (University of South Carolina)
• Sample BMP Files (FileSamplesHub)

There is a QuickView window on Windows 98 in this book.

• Tim O'Reilly, Troy Mott, Walter Glenn. "*Windows 98 in a nutshell : a desktop quick reference *", 1999, pp.260-261.

Quick View is available for Windows NT4.0. And gone before the release of Windows 2000.

• Added quikview.exe (v4.00) on Windows NT 4.0 build 1130 (BetaWiki), Compared to Windows NT 3.51 Server.
• Deleted quikview.exe on Windows 2000 (aka NT5.0) build 1969 (BetaWiki), 1999-06-26, this is Windows 2000 beta 3.

It seems that some users have since ported it to later Windows.

• AMIRSYAHRANI. Great Windows Explorer Tools (Devian Art, 2009) for XP ...Windows 7
• AMIRZ and roytam1. Old Microsoft Windows Quickview Win 95-98 ported to Xp And Vista (MSFN, 2008 - 2023) for Windows 10, but the file has disappeared.
  • mirror Searching for a file name "quikview.7z", here's a mirror. This is also stored on archive.org.
  • Extracted to C:\quikview\quikview.exe , Running install-x64.reg, the Quick View worked on Win 10 64bit!

QuickView Plus for Window by InSo

Quick View Plus! For Windows 3.1. Like this, the Plus version was sold for a long time. Finally, normal Quick View was removed from Windows in the pre-release beta version of Windows 2000. QuickView Plus was sold by Inso, and Microsoft also explained it.

QuickView is not an installable option for Windows 2000 or Windows Me, and the QuickView command is removed from the context menu on upgrades. All single-user QuickView Plus sales and support is now being handled by JASC Corporation. Inso Corporation continues to handle QuickView Plus for the large corporate customer.

• QuickView Command Is Missing from Context Menu for Files (Q253869)

So, normal Quick View was not included in Windows 2000 or Windows Me. And InSo developed the product and JASC was involved in its marketing.

• Quick View Plus! For Windows 3.1 (Amazon)
• Quick View Plus! For Windows 3.1 (Archive)
• Quick View Plus! For Windows 3.1 (Archive)
• Quick View Plus! 4.0 (Archive)
• Quick View Plus! 4.5 (Archive)
• Quick View Plus! 6 (Archive)

QuikView for Windows by QuikTech AB (1994)

This is a data analysis tool. In 1993, Swedish entrepreneurs founded a software company called Quik-Tech and developed QuikView. QuikView for Windows 1.0 was released in 1994. In 1996, the company name was changed to Qlik-Tech and the software was renamed "QlikView". This was because many software products used the same prefix, making it impossible to register the trademark.

• Hic. A Historical Odyssey: QlikView 1 (Qlik community, 2012)
• Henric Cronström. A Historical Odyssey: Quality - Learning - Interaction - Knowledge (Qlik community, 2012) : Japanese:日本語
• Drew Johnson et al. "International directory of company histories Volume 168", 2015, p322-323.

In the book

Quick View

Even with a very simple search, the oldest reference I could find was in a book from 1657. Probably much older. It would not be a particularly recent word.

We will now crosse the Greek Seas to Europe, and take a quick view of most of those Cities, which are of the first magnitude

• James Howell. "Londinopolis", 1657, p385. Text data

Simply connected QuickView was also used in the 19th century.

QuikView (1982)

Quikview without the letter “C” appears in a 1985 book by John W. Seybold, the father of computer typesetting. It appears to be an expansion board for Motorola 68000 manufactured by Bedford Computer.

Bedford Computer Quikview upgrade (of Motorola 68000 power painter board-1982).

• John W. Seybold. The World of Digital Typesetting, 1985 Supplement.