[1] Originally conceived by Doug Wolfgram under the name FlashGun, the first public version of GRASP was the Graphical System for Presentation.

In 1984 Doug Wolfgram conceived of the idea of an animation scripting language that would allow graphics images to move smoothly across a computer screen under program control.

[5] In February 1991 GRASP 4.0 was released, with the ability to create "self-executing" demos (bind to make EXE added), AutoDesk FLI/FLC support, PC Speaker Digitized Sound, and a robust programming environment.

"[7] A stripped-down version of GRASP 4.0 was also included with copies of Philip Shaddock's Multimedia Creations: Hands-On Workshop for Exploring Animation and Sound.

[8] In June 1993, Multi-Media GRASP 1.0 (also known as MMGRASP and MultiMedia GRaphic Animation System for Professionals Version 5.0) was released with TrueColor support.

Authorship and ownership Early in 1990 Doug Wolfgram sold his remaining rights to GRASP (and PCPaint) to John Bridges.

Unlike competing technologies such as Macromedia Director, GLPro took a very minimalist approach, providing an extensive scripting language rather than a lot of WYSIWYG tools within a Graphical User Interface.

An unusual design philosophy behind GLPro is that it does not rely on external OS services to handle many media types, such as MP3 audio, MPEG video, etc.

The thinking is that by avoiding OS services for these tasks, the end user is spared the problem of needing to install additional components before being able to run a multimedia title on their machine - it is intended to "just work".

GLPro was moved into a separate company, GMedia, in early 2000, which closed their doors in February 2001 just as the native Macintosh and Linux support was entering public beta testing.