Hi, maybe a bit off topic, but a friend found a nice page about the 1995 Microsoft Bob user interface:
http://toastytech.com/guis/bob2.html Bob is a desktop for Windows 3 (and 95) and aims to be VERRRRY intuitive. Actually, the desktop looks like a room and you can place objects there instead of placing icons or menu items. You are haunted by cute assistants like Bob the dog all the time - you see him back in the WinXP search assistant. Problem is that soon after Bob (required 486 / 8 MB / VGA), the popular Win95 hit the market. MS did not dare to re-introduce over-cute candy-color iGUIs again until WinXP, it seems. But they did plug "cute" paper clips into Office (YES, there are users which think that they are cute - no idea if they think that the assistants are USEFUL, though). Oh, and the rooms are "really 3d" - vector graphics where you can move objects closer / further (similar to Linux fvwm2 raise / lower, but in Bob, objects even get bigger / smaller when you move them along the Z axis. Sure great on a PC with 1995 performance ;-)). [Correction: The GUI is called Bob, but the dog is called Rover!] Other highlights from the page: http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html - Timeline of GUIs -> http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline2.html 1973 Xerox Alto with mouse, windows, GUI, network 1981 Xerox Star: overlapping windows, 1024x768, double-clicks 1983 Apple Lisa, MS *announces* Windows 1984 Apple Mac, DR GEM for DOS, X Window System for VAX clients 1985 GeOS for C64, Amiga with Workbench, MS *releases* Windows 1 1987 Apple Mac II with 256-from-16m-colors. GEM forced to look less "Mac-y". MS Windows 2 finally allows overlapping resizeable windows... Acorn Arthur GUI for RISC OS ... 1988 IBM OS/2 with Presentation Manager GUI (looks similar to Windows 2) NeXT workstation (6.5k USD, 25MHz 68030, 8 MB RAM, 250 MB MO disk, FPU, DSP for sound, fax modem, 17in CRT). Reminds me of Linux NeXTstep GUI ;^) 1990 Workbench 2 (3d looks for icons etc.), Windows 3 (Program manager: put your icons into windows inside the progman window), PC-GEOS 1992 IBM OS/2 2, 32bit OS with new GUI "Workplace Shell". Amiga gets more and more colors: Workbench 3. Windows 3.1 has more screen savers and stuff. 1993 Windows NT introduced, version 3.1 looks like Windows 3.1 but is 32bit. For PowerPC, Alpha and MIPS CPUs and of course for i386 architecture. 1994 QNX presents the Photon microGUI (big task bar / dock, virtual desktop which is several screens in size, kind of KDE ;-)) 1995 Windows 95, BeOS (for PowerPC / i386, for multi-CPU systems, multimedia) 1996 New Deal Office (PC-GEOS successor, for DOS), OS/2 Warp 4 (probably better than Win95 but MS makreting won...), WinNT 4 with Win95 GUI (and no longer with a real microkernel, to improve performance...) 1997 Mac OS 8, looking quite fresh, people had waited for that new Mac OS. 1998 Windows 98 - Internet Explorer as a shell... 1999 Mac OS X, now BSD Un*x based, and RISC OS 4 (...). 2000 Apple Aqua GUI for Mac OS X, Windows 2000 (NT 5) with I.E. "GUI" finally 2001 Windows XP (2000 plus candy colors, assistants... minus the idea that NT is supposed to be an OS for knowledgeable / "pro" users) 2003 Windows Server 2003 / .NET server looks a bit more sane / work again http://toastytech.com/guis/indexmisc.html Many other GUIs and OSes listed, http://toastytech.com/guis/dvxappmgr.gif DESQview/X for example. With NCSA Mosaic http://toastytech.com/guis/dvxweb.gif and http://toastytech.com/guis/dvxmswin.gif able to run Windows 3.1 in an X Window with remote access. Well, it is just yet another X. Run Netscape in it. http://toastytech.com/guis/deskmate2.html Tandy DeskMate is old but fancy, too, but the author does not know how old exactly. http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html QNX showing off with their 1-floppy OS (includes JavaScript enabled web browser... for 386 / 8 MB, network, VGA/VESA...) Last but not least: Collection of TextUserInterfaces: http://toastytech.com/guis/text.html - something like Outlook for DOS - VisualBasic for DOS - Lynx Browser - hey, where are XTree, Norton Commander, PC Tools, StarOffice predecessors...? Okay, they DOS have DOSSHELL and Norton Commander on the page. Eric ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the new InstallShield X. >From Windows to Linux, servers to mobile, InstallShield X is the one installation-authoring solution that does it all. Learn more and evaluate today! http://www.installshield.com/Dev2Dev/0504 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
