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Location: GUIs > Linux / Unix > OpenWindows 2 - SunOS 4.1.1


OpenWindows 2 - SunOS 4.1.1
Screen Shots

SunOS 4.1.1 (AKA Solaris 1.0) includes both OpenWindows 2 and the SunView desktop. When a regular user logs in to SunOS for the fist time they are presented with an option to select the environment they want to use, which is then automatically launched on subsequent logins.

OpenWindows 2 Splash Screen
OpenWindows is an X11/NeWS protocol based system that implements a user interface specification called Open Look.

OpenWindows Version 2 was the first version of OpenWindows included with SunOS/Solaris. Version 1 was a separate product from SunOS.

This is supposed to be able to display in color, but again the color emulation in TME's Sun-3 mode does not seem to work quite right.

OpenWindows 2 Default Desktop
This is the default desktop. By default it opens a console and a file manager window.

Applications are started by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting them from the "Workspace" menu. Applications can also be run from the file manager.

The wastebasket icon is actually part of the file manager, so when the file manager is exited the wastebasket icon disappears too.

Window Managment
Window management in OpenWindows is more like one might expect today. Clicking the titlebar with the left mouse button lets you drag the window around, and clicking on the corners lets you resize the window. The edges here even have enlarged corners to emphasize the corners can be grabbed.

The terminology for reducing a window to an icon is still "close", and "quit" is used to terminate a program. These options are accessed by right-clicking on the titlebar.

The down-arrow in the upper left can also be clicked to reduce the window to an icon, but there are no other buttons for similar functions.

OpenWindows File Manager
The OpenWindows file manager is mostly the same as SunView's Fileview. It can view files as icons, list, or list with details, it displays the path at the top as a series of folders, and can also display a hierarchy of folders.

New file manager windows can be opened from the Workspace menu, although each window is actually a new instance of the file manager, and only one instance is intended to be open at a time. This can be seen by how each new instance also creates an additional wastebasket icon on the desktop.

OpenWindows Drag and Drop
Files and folders can be dragged and dropped to any visible folder or the wastebasket. Files in the wastebasket are stored there until emptied.

The file manager has the same Find command as the SunView Fileview. Both of these feel surprisingly like the implementation in Microsoft Windows 95/NT4. Just select find from the file manager menu, type in a file spec, and click the find button and it lists all files in the current or specified folder that meet that spec.

Interestingly these dialogs do not use checkboxes or radio buttons, but rather use rectangular selection buttons. When one of these buttons is clicked it changes to bold/depressed and stays that way until clicked again.