. The site has grown gradually ever since to
become one of the most-used online dictionaries, and the top online
dictionary for its language pairs of English-Spanish, English-French,
English-Italian, Spanish-French, and Spanish-Portuguese. Today, I am
happy to continue working on improving the dictionaries, its tools and
the language forums. I really do enjoy creating new features to make
the site more and more useful."

= From print versions

The first online language dictionaries stemmed from print versions,
with websites launched in the mid-1990s.

On the website "Merriam-Webster Online: The Language Center", Merriam-
Webster, a main publisher of English-language dictionaries, gave free
access to online resources stemming from its print publications. The
online resources were: Webster Dictionary, Webster Thesaurus, Webster's
Third (a lexical landmark), Guide to International Business
Communications, Vocabulary Builder (with interactive vocabulary
quizzes), and the Barnhart Dictionary Companion (hot new words). The
goal was also to help track down definitions, spellings,
pronunciations, synonyms, vocabulary exercises, and other key facts
about words and language.

The "Dictionnaire Francophone en Ligne" was the web version of the
"Dictionnaire Universel Francophone", published by Hachette, a major
French publisher, and the University Agency for Francophony (AUF:
Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, also known as AUPELF-UREF).
The dictionary included not only standard French but also the French-
language words and expressions used worldwide. French is the official
language of 49 states, with a number of them in Africa, and is spoken
by 500 million people worldwide. The Agency of French-speaking
Countries (Agence de la Francophonie), which has included the AUF, was
founded in 1970 as an instrument of multilateral cooperation at the
international level. As a side remark, English and French are the only
official and/or cultural languages that are widely spread on five
continents.

= Directories of dictionaries

Directories of dictionaries have been useful too, such as
"Dictionnaires Electroniques" (Electronic Dictionaries), an online
catalog of electronic dictionaries maintained by the French Section of
the Swiss Federal Administration's Central Linguistic Services (SLC-f:
Section Francaise des Services Linguistiques Centraux). The catalog
included five main sections: abbreviations and acronyms, monolingu