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Comment by a1o | Hacker News Reader

Do you have that Windows 3.1 version that came with the Compaq that had the DE that was like a paper folder instead of an empty desktop, and that you could put the icons in the different tabs of the paper folder?

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Your comment reminds me of HP's obscure EFI OS called QuickLook. I would guess there are a lot of obscure OSs out there.

Oh, yeah! I think ASUS also had something like that at some point.

There were multiple ones, including some by BIOS vendors offered to many hardware OEMs.

Hyperspace was one of the most widely-seen.

https://gekk.info/articles/hyperspace.htm

I'd watch this if I were you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssob-7sGVWs

I knew what video that was going to be before I clicked it. I highly recommend watching the whole series, including more cursed OSs created because windows booted slowly (?): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLec1d3OBbZ8IBeFODHXLy...

> I knew what video that was going to be before I clicked it.

A man of culture.

Text article, instead of video, for other video-haters like me...

https://gekk.info/articles/hp-quickweb.htm

I believe you are speaking of Tabworks?

I had to Google and it does look like it, I remember the computer would boot into it and it also had space for a few (three?) icons outside the tabs (like in the “desktop”). It was a cool interface!

That sounds correct, I know what the GP is describing, very first computer for me. I was actually rather unfamiliar with the basic Win 3.1 desktop.

HP had several innovative GUIs of its own, before Microsoft destroyed the market with a good enough one of its own.

NewWave was its first and long predated even Windows 3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewWave

HP was once a UI and GUI pioneer and did other quite radical stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_User_Environment

TabWorks wasn't an HP thing -- it just bundled it with some consumer Compaq kit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TabWorks

I don't think I've heard of an alternate shell/launcher like that before. Do you remember what it was called?

Windows still (well, Win2000) lets you build a custom shell, just replace explorer.exe (and a bunch of other work).

I've heard of custom shells for Windows before, but not that specific one

HSc made an alternate file manager for Windows 2. They never ported it to Windows 3.

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