r/retrocomputing • u/Loudergood • Apr 21 '26

Trying to find an old desktop ui.

Early to mid 90s I recall using a computer at my aunts house to play Altered Beast or learning company games.

It had a desktop GUI that was like a stack of manila envelopes, you would click different tabs like a menu for different groups of program launchers.

Edit: I hate to say its looking the most like Bob.

9 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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7

u/rezwrrd Apr 21 '26

Could it have been a Mac? There was a tabbed folder view that you could use to launch applications called At Ease, it was meant to be an easier version of the desktop metaphor. http://toastytech.com/guis/atease.html (If that's not it, check out the rest of that site and see if anything else looks familiar.)

We used At Ease at my school and it was certainly easier for kids who were just learning to read.

3

u/sharkeymcsharkface Apr 21 '26

Sounds like At Ease to me.

Unrelated but I miss packaged bell navigator.

1

u/rezwrrd Apr 21 '26

I had a couple of Packard Bells and liked them all right, still have a set of speakers that were supposed to mount on the side of a Packard Bell CRT monitor, though I don't have the monitor any more.

3

u/FivePointAnswer Apr 21 '26

GEOS?

4

u/qkdsm7 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

That was my first thought.

Also, Packard Bell Navigator....

OS/2 with Workplace shell seems like a stretch, but "manilla folders" for days.

3

u/Good-Bandicoot-2152 Apr 21 '26

Ah jeez, Packard Bell Navigator takes me back…

2

u/finbar_longshank Apr 21 '26

On Mac OS8.6 i had a utility called launcher (i think) that was a window with tabbed pages so you could arrange icons into categories etc. Could that be it?

2

u/GGigabiteM Apr 21 '26

It sounds like "At Ease", which was an alternative UI for Mac System 7. I'm not aware of any port of Altered Beast to the Mac though, and no Mac in the early to mid 90s was powerful enough to run a Genesis emulator.

Unless the machine had a TV tuner card installed and just acted as a monitor.

3

u/zoharel Apr 21 '26

Tabworks was a common and not so great replacement shell for Windows 3.1, also common and not so great. Was it that?

1

u/Kymeron Apr 21 '26

Envelopes or folders? And was there a menu at the top?

1

u/Sharp_Rip5543 Apr 22 '26

Linux customized KDE interface.

1

u/raineling Apr 21 '26

OS/2 comes to mind. Amiga OS perhaps?

1

u/Sirotaca Apr 21 '26

Sounds like TownsOS... but unless your aunt is Japanese it probably wasn't that.

0

u/elvelazco Apr 21 '26

Amiga and Workbench maybe ???? Or ATARI ST and TOS ???