14 ms·

DESKTOP2 – A Graphical User Interface for DOS

133 points by marcodiego 3y ago

felipelalli 3y ago
I am from that time, and it's funny that I've never heard about this. Sometimes it's sad to see such a complex project that probably hasn't been used much.
behnamoh 3y ago
Icons used to be meaningful and convey what they did. Now it's mostly shiny fancy crap, and they all look the same. I always find it difficult to find VSCode on macOS because a lot of apps use similar colors and patterns. I tried customizing VSC's icon but it goes back to its ugly confusing default icon after each update.
- nunobrito 3y ago
  Or worse, icons get grouped and they removed the labels for apps when launched. Fairly awful having to scroll through the equal icons to get back into the expected terminal or file browser path. Usability has really been going down the drain to copy smartphones into the desktop.
  - masswerk 3y ago
    My pet grievance is Apple's progressive transition from direct manipulation and drag-and-drop to the most evil click-and-wait-to-reveal-and-reorient-the-pointer-to-eventually-drag scheme, e.g., for proxy icons.
- krm01 3y ago
  I’ve designed many interfaces. Icons and use of icons is a difficult story. It used to be simpler, because many of the operations the icons would represent were digitized actions that previously had a physical component. For example: save was iconified as a diskette. Later we had upload icons being a cloud with an arrow going up to indicate ‘upload to the cloud’. Today we design Interfaces for Machine Learning software, where an action might be ‘load language model’. These are actions that don’t have a history rooted in physical space. Or in the case of the upload icon, a visual metaphor. So the iconography space is currently in an interesting phase. We have to create new metaphors if we want to keep utilizing benefits of icons in UI.
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    This is not really extrapolable enough to claim a trend. I am using a piece of software from the 90s that has an icon for "Load transistor switching activity history" which is frankly even more abstract. Yet most if not all desktop/office software from the 20s sill uses icons that are based on physical objects. They even use a diskette as save. i.e. Specialized software is going to be specialized. It's not new.
- pantalaimon 3y ago
  While I also dislike the trend towards minimal icons, I don’t think the ones in this project are a good example. They are more whimsical than they are helpful. Without the text I wouldn’t be able to tell what they mean.
Quiark 3y ago
My father used to use another one, I think it was called START and made in Czech. Unfortunately I can't find it on any internet archive sites :(
- JdeBP 3y ago
  That will almost certainly have been renamed to another name early on in its lifetime. So unfortunately you probably need to know what it was renamed to.
- stefanos82 3y ago
  The only START I could find is this http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/64_dosstart.html http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/64_dosstart.html
mjsweet 3y ago
*DESKTOP is somewhat in the middle between MS-Windows and Norton Commander...* Does anyone here recall the intuitive nature of Norton Commander, especially in terms of file operations? This may be reaching back about three decades, so my recollection might be a bit hazy. As I recall, it was a viable alternative to Windows Explorer even during the era of Windows 3.1. One particular aspect that stands out to me was the dual-pane interface. This allowed for seamless navigation within the directory hierarchy - you could tag files in the pane on one side, then initiate a move or copy operation to the directory in the other pane, and vice versa. Given the complexity of today's file operations and UIs, Norton Commander's straightforward approach feels refreshingly simple and efficient in hindsight. I'd be interested to hear other users' reminiscences and thoughts.
- galkk 3y ago
  Norton-style commanders were huge in xUSSR. FAR and Dos Navigator were among the most popular, and in the end FAR won it (as it was windows app and got rich ecosystem of plugins). They were good not only due dual panel interface (newer versions were actually multi-panel, where you cold go as many 2 panel "workspaces" as you want), but they enabled extremely efficient keyboard only workflows. Windows couldn't get it even now. Far is still alive: https://www.farmanager.com/ https://www.farmanager.com/ Also I don't use it, but I install midnight commander on every my linux setup just for memories.
  - networked 3y ago
    Don't forget Volkov Commander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander). It was convenient for bootable floppies because of its small size and self-contained design. Far 2 has a Linux (as well as macOS and BSD) port that is quite active: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l https://github.com/elfmz/far2l. Far Manager was what I switched to from Norton Commander. These days I prefer Double Commander, a cross-platform Total Commander workalike: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/ https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/.
    - blackhaz 3y ago
VectorLock 3y ago
I love this user testimonial in particular... >i love your gui!!! it's great! my only problem is that i can't read german so i am forced to navigate using either trial-and-error or my trusty german-english dictionary (which is not well equipped at translating computer jargon!!) anyway, this is probably a lost cause and i understand you not wanting to go through all the hassel of translating it -- i was just wondering!! but all the same, great job!! it's a wonderful piece of software!!
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  The cute typo in the review reminded me of this old joke (my apologies in advance): David Hasselhoff tells his assistant: “From now on, I want be known as The Hoff. Just The Hoff.” Says the assistant: “Sure, boss. No hassle.”
- riedel 3y ago
  Speaking of German: does anyone know why the favicon of the site is the one of Fraunhofer? What is the history?
  - laserdancepony 3y ago
    Apparently the author works there, and is hosting this page the classic academic way: out of a user directory (http://mre-web.mevis.fraunhofer.de/~ritter/awakeideas/ http://mre-web.mevis.fraunhofer.de/~ritter/awakeideas/).
rbanffy 3y ago
From the screenshots, it is a bit cluttered. I know the VGA resolution is limiting, but GUIs were not uncommon at that time.
- jaclaz 3y ago
  Only for the record/for some retro experimenter, there was at the time also MC Shell, the Author, Mike Manning, allowed the redistribution of the full shell (it was Shareware at the time): http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=752 http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=752
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    Looks MUCH nicer. I remember some library, which I saw used in an accounting package, that had a very OpenWindows look that worked well on low resolution screens.
    - jaclaz 3y ago
      There was Ensemble/New Deal, though that was later (derived from Geoworks): http://toastytech.com/guis/nd32.html http://toastytech.com/guis/nd32.html
      - rbanffy 3y ago
        That’s not the one. Close though and very pleasant to use.
EuropeOverlords 3y ago
[dead]
peterisza 3y ago
I think it is beautiful.
jmclnx 3y ago
My favorite file manager was dm220 by Bob Abrahams. With that said, I never heard of DESKTOP2, but looks very interesting.
0x445442 3y ago
This resource and the comments highlight the idea that an OS shell is not just a piece of software that runs in a terminal emulator. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there that OS shells are synonymous with bash, zsh, fish etc. But they can and used to be richer. I’ve also seen many references to dual pane file managers in this thread but no mention of the arguable leader of this group, which is still going strong on windows; Directory Opus.
cmos 3y ago
I made my DOS apps using National Instruments DOS GUI.. it was oddly wonderful, and super easy to make full fledged applications with 'c' calls. It's a shame they now just make bloatware for niche testing environments. Then I got into visual basic in the later 90's and was able to build amazing apps as well. Then it all got overly complicated seemingly.
pelagicAustral 3y ago
The amount of soul in this desktop interface is off the charts.
rkapsoro 3y ago
This was my first (tiny) taste of a non-MS-DOS/Windows environment for PC. Back in middle school, circa 1997 or 98, with the tiny scraps of time I could get on an Internet connection with a web browser, I ended up using Infoseek (or similar) to look for software I could run on my 486 at home. Amusingly, I think this was on a Mac. One of the first things I found was Desktop2, but alas I never got it to run because the installer I downloaded ended up corrupted. Probably on account of using the Mac to download it and save it on a floppy (probably using the PC Exchange Mac extension?) Never actually saw the thing run until I YouTube'd it more than 20 years later. Shame I never got it to run - it looks like it actually would have been pretty useful and interesting. Not long after I found FreeBSD, got dialup at home, and embarked on a project to download and run that.
- rkapsoro 3y ago
  Man. The filesystem and disk features look particularly awesome. I would have definitely got mileage out of it back in those days. Alas!
fpanzer 3y ago
[flagged]
dancemethis 3y ago
The real question is why in tarnation does this redirect to "operacao404.mj.gov.br".
pgib 3y ago
Not quite the same, but I used to use DESQview back in the day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview Was a very cool product to bring multi-tasking into the DOS world.
unixhero 3y ago
Norton commander = the original ORTHODOX FILEMANAGER. See wikipedia for a list of all the clones, including mid ight commmander, total commander, double commander, volcov commander, far, opus
unixhero 3y ago
Hey! It looks like the Amiga workbench!

133 points by marcodiego 3y ago

I am from that time, and it's funny that I've never heard about this. Sometimes it's sad to see such a complex project that probably hasn't been used much.

behnamoh 3y ago

Icons used to be meaningful and convey what they did. Now it's mostly shiny fancy crap, and they all look the same. I always find it difficult to find VSCode on macOS because a lot of apps use similar colors and patterns. I tried customizing VSC's icon but it goes back to its ugly confusing default icon after each update.

nunobrito 3y ago
Or worse, icons get grouped and they removed the labels for apps when launched. Fairly awful having to scroll through the equal icons to get back into the expected terminal or file browser path. Usability has really been going down the drain to copy smartphones into the desktop.
- masswerk 3y ago
  My pet grievance is Apple's progressive transition from direct manipulation and drag-and-drop to the most evil click-and-wait-to-reveal-and-reorient-the-pointer-to-eventually-drag scheme, e.g., for proxy icons.
krm01 3y ago
I’ve designed many interfaces. Icons and use of icons is a difficult story. It used to be simpler, because many of the operations the icons would represent were digitized actions that previously had a physical component. For example: save was iconified as a diskette. Later we had upload icons being a cloud with an arrow going up to indicate ‘upload to the cloud’. Today we design Interfaces for Machine Learning software, where an action might be ‘load language model’. These are actions that don’t have a history rooted in physical space. Or in the case of the upload icon, a visual metaphor. So the iconography space is currently in an interesting phase. We have to create new metaphors if we want to keep utilizing benefits of icons in UI.
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  This is not really extrapolable enough to claim a trend. I am using a piece of software from the 90s that has an icon for "Load transistor switching activity history" which is frankly even more abstract. Yet most if not all desktop/office software from the 20s sill uses icons that are based on physical objects. They even use a diskette as save. i.e. Specialized software is going to be specialized. It's not new.
pantalaimon 3y ago
While I also dislike the trend towards minimal icons, I don’t think the ones in this project are a good example. They are more whimsical than they are helpful. Without the text I wouldn’t be able to tell what they mean.

Quiark 3y ago

My father used to use another one, I think it was called START and made in Czech. Unfortunately I can't find it on any internet archive sites :(

JdeBP 3y ago
That will almost certainly have been renamed to another name early on in its lifetime. So unfortunately you probably need to know what it was renamed to.
stefanos82 3y ago
The only START I could find is this http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/64_dosstart.html http://qbasicgui.datacomponents.net/64_dosstart.html

mjsweet 3y ago

*DESKTOP is somewhat in the middle between MS-Windows and Norton Commander...* Does anyone here recall the intuitive nature of Norton Commander, especially in terms of file operations? This may be reaching back about three decades, so my recollection might be a bit hazy. As I recall, it was a viable alternative to Windows Explorer even during the era of Windows 3.1. One particular aspect that stands out to me was the dual-pane interface. This allowed for seamless navigation within the directory hierarchy - you could tag files in the pane on one side, then initiate a move or copy operation to the directory in the other pane, and vice versa. Given the complexity of today's file operations and UIs, Norton Commander's straightforward approach feels refreshingly simple and efficient in hindsight. I'd be interested to hear other users' reminiscences and thoughts.

galkk 3y ago
Norton-style commanders were huge in xUSSR. FAR and Dos Navigator were among the most popular, and in the end FAR won it (as it was windows app and got rich ecosystem of plugins). They were good not only due dual panel interface (newer versions were actually multi-panel, where you cold go as many 2 panel "workspaces" as you want), but they enabled extremely efficient keyboard only workflows. Windows couldn't get it even now. Far is still alive: https://www.farmanager.com/ https://www.farmanager.com/ Also I don't use it, but I install midnight commander on every my linux setup just for memories.
- networked 3y ago
  Don't forget Volkov Commander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkov_Commander). It was convenient for bootable floppies because of its small size and self-contained design. Far 2 has a Linux (as well as macOS and BSD) port that is quite active: https://github.com/elfmz/far2l https://github.com/elfmz/far2l. Far Manager was what I switched to from Norton Commander. These days I prefer Double Commander, a cross-platform Total Commander workalike: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/ https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/.
  - blackhaz 3y ago

VectorLock 3y ago

I love this user testimonial in particular... >i love your gui!!! it's great! my only problem is that i can't read german so i am forced to navigate using either trial-and-error or my trusty german-english dictionary (which is not well equipped at translating computer jargon!!) anyway, this is probably a lost cause and i understand you not wanting to go through all the hassel of translating it -- i was just wondering!! but all the same, great job!! it's a wonderful piece of software!!

Cockbrand 3y ago
The cute typo in the review reminded me of this old joke (my apologies in advance): David Hasselhoff tells his assistant: “From now on, I want be known as The Hoff. Just The Hoff.” Says the assistant: “Sure, boss. No hassle.”
riedel 3y ago
Speaking of German: does anyone know why the favicon of the site is the one of Fraunhofer? What is the history?
- laserdancepony 3y ago
  Apparently the author works there, and is hosting this page the classic academic way: out of a user directory (http://mre-web.mevis.fraunhofer.de/~ritter/awakeideas/ http://mre-web.mevis.fraunhofer.de/~ritter/awakeideas/).

rbanffy 3y ago

From the screenshots, it is a bit cluttered. I know the VGA resolution is limiting, but GUIs were not uncommon at that time.

jaclaz 3y ago
Only for the record/for some retro experimenter, there was at the time also MC Shell, the Author, Mike Manning, allowed the redistribution of the full shell (it was Shareware at the time): http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=752 http://reboot.pro/index.php?showtopic=752
- rbanffy 3y ago
  Looks MUCH nicer. I remember some library, which I saw used in an accounting package, that had a very OpenWindows look that worked well on low resolution screens.
  - jaclaz 3y ago
    There was Ensemble/New Deal, though that was later (derived from Geoworks): http://toastytech.com/guis/nd32.html http://toastytech.com/guis/nd32.html
    - rbanffy 3y ago
      That’s not the one. Close though and very pleasant to use.

EuropeOverlords 3y ago

[dead]

peterisza 3y ago

I think it is beautiful.

jmclnx 3y ago

My favorite file manager was dm220 by Bob Abrahams. With that said, I never heard of DESKTOP2, but looks very interesting.

0x445442 3y ago

This resource and the comments highlight the idea that an OS shell is not just a piece of software that runs in a terminal emulator. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there that OS shells are synonymous with bash, zsh, fish etc. But they can and used to be richer. I’ve also seen many references to dual pane file managers in this thread but no mention of the arguable leader of this group, which is still going strong on windows; Directory Opus.

cmos 3y ago

I made my DOS apps using National Instruments DOS GUI.. it was oddly wonderful, and super easy to make full fledged applications with 'c' calls. It's a shame they now just make bloatware for niche testing environments. Then I got into visual basic in the later 90's and was able to build amazing apps as well. Then it all got overly complicated seemingly.

pelagicAustral 3y ago

The amount of soul in this desktop interface is off the charts.

rkapsoro 3y ago

This was my first (tiny) taste of a non-MS-DOS/Windows environment for PC. Back in middle school, circa 1997 or 98, with the tiny scraps of time I could get on an Internet connection with a web browser, I ended up using Infoseek (or similar) to look for software I could run on my 486 at home. Amusingly, I think this was on a Mac. One of the first things I found was Desktop2, but alas I never got it to run because the installer I downloaded ended up corrupted. Probably on account of using the Mac to download it and save it on a floppy (probably using the PC Exchange Mac extension?) Never actually saw the thing run until I YouTube'd it more than 20 years later. Shame I never got it to run - it looks like it actually would have been pretty useful and interesting. Not long after I found FreeBSD, got dialup at home, and embarked on a project to download and run that.

rkapsoro 3y ago
Man. The filesystem and disk features look particularly awesome. I would have definitely got mileage out of it back in those days. Alas!

fpanzer 3y ago

[flagged]

dancemethis 3y ago

The real question is why in tarnation does this redirect to "operacao404.mj.gov.br".

pgib 3y ago

Not quite the same, but I used to use DESQview back in the day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview Was a very cool product to bring multi-tasking into the DOS world.

unixhero 3y ago

Norton commander = the original ORTHODOX FILEMANAGER. See wikipedia for a list of all the clones, including mid ight commmander, total commander, double commander, volcov commander, far, opus

unixhero 3y ago

Hey! It looks like the Amiga workbench!