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BEOSWin : A BEOS Deskbar Shell Application

Written by Paul Robson (autismuk@aol.com)

BEOSWin is a BEOS style Shell for Windows 95 or 98, designed to emulate the "Deskbar" application of BEOS version 5. A picture of it is shown here running on my desktop. This is a Beta testing version, officially it is 1.03 though.

The following features are up and running :-

  • Provides most of the functionality of the deskbar menu.
  • Uses menus directly from Windows, but allows additional menus.
  • Will run on Windows 95 and 98 at least. Don't know about anything else.
  • Will co-exist with the normal explorer shell
  • Tiny (<80k) executable, self installing (just run it !)
  • No support files at all, no uninstall program, it is completely harmless. If you don't run it it isn't there.
  • Open Source
  • NEW Desktop Shortcuts (if explorer not running)
  • NEW Startup Menu Execution (if explorer not running)
It will eventually be able to run as a complete replacement shell for Windows, and it can be used as such now, but it is missing some of the projected final features.
  • Efx/Windowblinds replacement in application (in development)
  • Run Dialog
  • Recent Documents menu item
  • Recent Applications menu item
To try it, just run the enclosed executable. That's it, there are no other files or anything like that. It will almost certainly ask you to install via a simple MessageBox. If you do this all it does is to copy the executable file BEOSWIN.EXE to the Windows directory. It then pops up a dialog allowing you to select it as the default shell.  If you cancel at this point it will still work, it just won't have copied the file in. BEOS Deskbar will then start up.

You are probably running "Explorer" for this. It will hide the Explorer Window, and create a new "non-accessible" area at the top of the screen, so you can always see the BEOS menu bar. Don't worry, when the program terminates everything goes back as it was and nothing will change (unless it crashes and it seems pretty stable). The only changes made to the system is that it writes some entries into your WIN.INI file.

Using the menu is relatively simple. The top menu opens cascading Windows a bit like Start Menu does, except it's click up and click down, though the succeeding menu entries aren't. The entries below it are the running applications which you can hide and show.

Configuration is equally simple. You can create program links exactly as before, using the "Configure Menu" option. You can also have additional ones that are collections of shortcuts in the subdirectory "BEOS Menu" of your Windows directory. One is created by default, "Demos", which is empty.

Desktop Shortcuts are created by dragging a file onto the deskbar window, a shortcut appears which can be moved. At present you cannot Drag and Drop onto the Desktop. At the moment shortcuts cannot be renamed. Desktop Shortcuts will not appear if Windows Explorer is running (I assume you want to use Explorer's shortcuts instead).

The ZIP also contains a copy of BE4.REG, a BEOS Style for Windows 9x, which you can double click on to run and installs a suitable appearence in the Display properties Panel Applet. I didn't create it. If the person who did lets me know, I'll acknowledge it or remove it appropriately.

You can also run EFX, or WindowBlinds with it if you want to have the full BEOS experience. Or install BEOS of course.

Known Bugs

  • Not all the Control Panel items are listed under Preferences.
  • It doesn't provide one task menu per application type, but one per application.

Downloads

If you run this program, and have any suggestions for improvements, bug reports, things that are rubbish, changes, BEOS suggestions, want to draw some better Small Icons for the application or know how to make WS_EX_TRANSPARENT work properly in Win 9x, or anything please contact me at autismuk@aol.com
 


The program was written using MS Visual C++ 4.2 but will probably compile on anything as it is a straight old-fashioned C application.


Last updated on 7th March 2001