b0012399_0204595.jpg (Photo : www.xguru.net)
Clip Art, an image service that provides free pictures for use in school papers or work presentations, is being officially ended as Microsoft Office made an announcement on Tuesday saying that it has "closed shop."
However, Microsoft Office said that users can still add pictures to their work in their application.
According to digital news website theage.com, the Clip Art image library started from only 82 images in Word 6.0 in 1996, but later expanded to have over 100,000 both static and moving illustrations that can be found on the Internet.
Microsoft Office users will now be redirected to its Bing search engine whenever they search for images to be inserted. Images that do pass through the Creative Commons licensing system will show up at the results.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the shutting down of Clip Art will not be a significant change for most of its users as the tech firm uses an online database for Clip Art images.
Cathy Belleville, one of the pioneer artists for the famous Clip Art illustrations, first worked on the Powerpoint software for the Redmond-based company. But she left Microsoft in 1995 and had her own idea for "Screen Beans," which is a range of black stick human-like figures that wear hats. The artist said that she was satisfied with her work.
However, Belleville said that she constantly sees her illustrations almost everywhere now. She said that she even saw Clip Art on a menu when she was in Africa.
"I've been to Singapore and seen them. I've been sitting on planes and seen people walk by me with them on T-shirts and with them on baseball caps," said Belleville.
Clip Art users can still have access to the illustrations in earlier versions of Microsoft Office and several websites such as openclipart.org.
There is also a chance that Clip Art may be brought back in the future as Microsoft has a reputation of bringing back some of its discontinued features in its Office software. For instance, the discontinued Clippy, an animated assistant in the software, has been seen in newer editions of Office.
