3 ms·

Many dos programs with a gui had all the same menus and fields before Windows. They just ran one at a time.

adrian_b 4y ago
I still believe that the file manager XTree for MS-DOS had the best user interface of any file manager that I have ever used, in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or MacOS, allowing one to perform any task with a minimum of key presses. It already had separate histories for each text field of the user interface, in which items could be made persistent. Even today, most programs with GUIs have much more poorly implemented histories, if they have them. Also for MS-DOS, the BRIEF editor for programmers used tiling windows and (optionally) a menu-driven interface that was better designed than that of most later text editors. It also allowed the redefinition of what happens when any key on the keyboard is pressed. The default action of inserting in the text the associated character could be replaced by an arbitrary script, which made easy the implementation of things like auto-completion or syntax coloring. Nevertheless, even if some important applications in Windows 95 were still regressions from the point of the user interface in comparison with what was available for MS-DOS, Windows 95 looked much nicer than anything using the standard VGA text modes and it was the version to which I have switched from MS-DOS. Even if I had previously tried Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11, those had felt too much like useless toys, in comparison with the professional programs that I was using under MS-DOS. The Windows 95 taskbar was definitely a very important improvement over Windows 3.x.
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  Oh dear lord, Xtree? That's a name I've not heard in some time..
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  I might try unixtree.org..
int_19h 4y ago
The best DOS TUIs were generally those that adopted CUA (e.g. Borland's IDEs and other software written in Turbo Vision). Windows UX also built heavily on it, and it is the source of most of its core keyboard shortcuts to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

I still believe that the file manager XTree for MS-DOS had the best user interface of any file manager that I have ever used, in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or MacOS, allowing one to perform any task with a minimum of key presses. It already had separate histories for each text field of the user interface, in which items could be made persistent. Even today, most programs with GUIs have much more poorly implemented histories, if they have them. Also for MS-DOS, the BRIEF editor for programmers used tiling windows and (optionally) a menu-driven interface that was better designed than that of most later text editors. It also allowed the redefinition of what happens when any key on the keyboard is pressed. The default action of inserting in the text the associated character could be replaced by an arbitrary script, which made easy the implementation of things like auto-completion or syntax coloring. Nevertheless, even if some important applications in Windows 95 were still regressions from the point of the user interface in comparison with what was available for MS-DOS, Windows 95 looked much nicer than anything using the standard VGA text modes and it was the version to which I have switched from MS-DOS. Even if I had previously tried Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11, those had felt too much like useless toys, in comparison with the professional programs that I was using under MS-DOS. The Windows 95 taskbar was definitely a very important improvement over Windows 3.x.

xen2xen1 4y ago
Oh dear lord, Xtree? That's a name I've not heard in some time..
xen2xen1 4y ago
I might try unixtree.org..

int_19h 4y ago

The best DOS TUIs were generally those that adopted CUA (e.g. Borland's IDEs and other software written in Turbo Vision). Windows UX also built heavily on it, and it is the source of most of its core keyboard shortcuts to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access