WHIP! logo R.I.P.

Autodesk Trademark and Copyright Specialist, Christine Kalb reports that due to official cancellation or abandonment with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Autodesk has deleted WHIP! from the U.S. trademark lists. For those of you too young to remember, WHIP! was our first Netscape Navigator Plug-in and Microsoft ActiveX Control that viewed DWF files.

Back in the day, Software Developer, Ben Sellers, created an animated GIF that we had fun with internally:

while Solutions Engineer, Jason Pratt, worked with marketing to give WHIP! a more professional look:

Technical Writer, Cicilie Gildersleeve, created an image for the About Box that was used for the WHIP! 3.1 release:

WHIP! 3.1 was the first WHIP! release to support Japanese. We updated the DWF format to support Unicode characters.

The About Box image was later updated to mate with the AutoCAD R14 theme:

WHIP! has long been replaced by the free Autodesk DWF Viewer. Though nostalgic, WHIP! pales in comparison to the Autodesk DWF Viewer in terms of capabilities. Today's DWF files and viewer capabilities are a far cry from what we originally had. With WHIP!, DWF files were like JPGs. With the Autodesk DWF Viewer and Autodesk Design Review, DWF files are part of workflow solutions - including both 2D and 3D.

We drink a toast to the WHIP! logo that is now toast.