Open Shell

Kees said:

I really don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.
I have used Windows in all ever available versions since Windows 3.1, of which since Win95 there was a taskbar, but I never have seen any E4WG or dashboard.

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Sorry for my typo, I have a hand condition called Dupytrens Contracture which restricts the movement of my ring fingers on each hand. I'm guessing you might be familiar as its known to affect primarily folks of Viking decent. So sometimes, especially when hitting the shift key for Caps, that left finger doesn't quite reach the W key and I get the E key instead.
If you're not interested in the quirky bits of computing history, stop reading :)

W4WGs (aka WFWGs) , when not typed badly, stands for Windows for Workgroups. I can't speak to any "consumer edition" of Windows and our migration path went from DOS to W4WGs. In a SOHO environment, support for NetBUI / IPX protocols, network cards, remote printers and files sharing, filemand print servers was advantageous. It also provided 32-bit file access, drive sharing, group calendaring, and built-in fax capabilities. However, more important to us was protected mode networking which left more memory available under the 640k limit which made AutoCAD work more efficiently.

Most folks today wouldn't remember "Dashboard". Back in the early 90s, we were just coming out of DOS, and using W4WGs. HP (aka Hewlette Packard) developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components, as well as software and related services, to consumers, small and medium-sized businesses" (quoted from Wiki). One of those software items was an app called "Dashboard". I first heard about from online forums run by Compuserve which I had begun using in 1990. The CSI service provided e-mail services as well as forums back when everything was still dial-up. Back then I was on the team that managed the "on line presence" for Time Warner (at that time most known for their monthly"How-To" books as well as various PC Hardware Sites.

The name"Dashboard" aptly described it's appearance. If you think of your screen as a "windshield window view", it remained out of view until you lowered your mouse to the bottom of your screen and it "popped up" when you did. The action was sorta like looking down to see your speedometer when about to pass a patrol car. It was somewhat popular in offices running Windows for WorkGroups and was oft preinstalled on HP Computers. Never had an HP box in our building, but after seeing it, I saw numerous advantages. For one, when it popped up, the various modules could be arranged vertically and horizontally in any order you wished. In our office, we had the DB set up to be about 3/4 inch high with two stackls of tabs for program groups at the left side, next we had a 2 x 2 area that looked like the 4 pane Windows logo. Next to that were a series of bars that displayed CPU and memory usage.

Each of the 4 panes represented a seprate virtial screen space. We had 1600 x 1200 monitors in those days. Those "panes" represented 4 virtual screen spaces,only one of which could be seen at a time. You switched virtual screens simply by clicking on a different pane, the monitor was 1600 1200, but the display space was 3200 x2400. On the right side were panels for the various printers and plotters, you could just drag a file on the printer to get it printed.

In short it was a 3rd party app, like many others to come and go over the years that added some utility and efficiency to the OS. being an appfor W4WGs, it preceded the task bar that surfaces in Win95. It'skind of like the conception that Apple invented the mouse, Jobs made it practical and affordable mostly by dropping it from 3 buttons to 1.

We also used it on NT and when HP dropped it VCom /Avanquest came out with the CoolBar as an option to their very capoable (for the time) Powerdesk utility. The PowerDesk CoolBar pretty much duplicated the function of Dashboard however, it was included in Powerdesk only until Version 6. One of the advantages of you and I keeping old emails :)

On 7/14/2008, 3:32 PM I got a disappointing response from Avanquest after asking "Where's the Coolbar ?"Their response said that "We did a minor re write of the viewers in version 7, that minor re write will not allow the tool bar to be added back into version 7". In short we lost the Coolbar to allow PD to view more file types. ...a feature I never used.

You can find it referenced here:


I went looking for the 3.5"disk and was disapointed to find my 6 drawers of 3.5" floppies are empty ... wife / aka "office Manager replaced them with boxes of staples, pencils, pens and and other office supplies. She has a Windows 7 Home Premium but she'slocked out if the network cause she's genetically challenged and can not resist clicking on any buttom that says FREE.

I'd love to see a pic of that thing again ... see if i can get someone to extract it

MrBeaujhangles said:

Sorry for my typo, I have a hand condition called Dupytrens Contracture which restricts the movement of my ring fingers on each hand.

W4WGs (aka WFWGs) , when not typed badly, stands for Windows for Workgroups.

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You had me searching the internet for E4WGs.

Stigg said:

You had me searching the internet for E4WGs.

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So did I! Couldn't understand what it was all about.

If I would list, what things in the past 60 years that I am having nostalgia for, it would be a long list.
But I will not do that, because the time is now, and what was once was, is no more.

As for computers are concerned, very many ways of using them have been changed, the one in apostive sense, the other in an annoying sense, but we'll have to live with that. You could wish that ways of using your computer that existed in the early 90's would come back, but they will not!

Developments in politics, environment, war and peace in the world do worry me much more than developments in computer technics that I don't like.

That's all that I would like to say about it. This has nothing to do anymore with your original question about Open Shell, so if you don't mind I will end my contibutions to this thread here.