Taking a look at NewShell

theotherosproject

I got myself two releases of NewShell to try out on my ThinkPad. The reason why I used an actual device is because I had major problems installing SP5 for NT 3.51 under VMware Workstation.

NewShell, also known as Shell Technology Preview, was meant to replace NT 3.51's default Program Manager interface with that of Windows Chicago (95 beta). Here is a comparison of release dates:

- NewShell (Shell Technology Preview) was released on 26 May 1995.
- Windows NT 3.51 was released on 30 May 1995.
- NewShell 2 (Shell Technology Preview Update) was released on 8 August 1995.
- Windows 95 was released on 24 August 1995.
- Windows NT 4.0 was released on 24 August 1996.

Wait, so NewShell was released before NT 3.51? I wasn't aware.

This is how NT 3.51 looks by default. I believe Windows 3.1 looks similar, only without some administrative tools.






Here are the NewShell (1) files. To install NewShell, you would run SHUPDATE.CMD.


After launching SHUPDATE.CMD and going through several prompts and a reboot, you are greeted with the new Windows Explorer interface. Note the thick taskbar borders.


All programs are now contained in the Start menu, as you would see in all subsequent versions of Windows. Until Windows 8, that is...


If you actually run "winver", you will notice that the Windows version is reported as Version 4.0. In reality, this is still Windows NT 3.51 with NewShell.


I ran a few programs and experimented with right-clicking, which I didn't know what it could do without NewShell. Once again, note the thick borders of Clock and Notepad.


More programs running. At this point, I noted that the borders were not just thick most of the time, they were also inconsistent. I suspect it is to differentiate the windows which can or cannot be resized.


File Manager is still present. In later versions of Windows, it would be replaced by Windows Explorer.




Now, let's take a look at NewShell 2, which is a little bit bigger. NewShell 1 had to be uninstalled before installing NewShell 2.


NT 3.51 with NewShell 2. An immediately noticeable change is the inclusion of My Briefcase. Other than that, I didn't notice any differences.






Unlike later versions of Windows, right-clicking on the desktop and then Properties opens up Color settings instead of Desktop settings.


That's about it for now. Time to shut down.


There are some bugs of course, since both NewShell releases were beta. In both NewShell releases, Task List (an ancient version of Task Manager) doesn't work, opens the Start menu instead for some reason; I also noticed that Windows NT Diagnostics doesn't launch either.

I would like to find some programs later and run them under NT 3.51 with NewShell. Hopefully I can figure how to use PCem or QEMU by then, because VMware frustrated me a lot two days ago with SP5 copy errors, and I'm not bothered to use VirtualBox at the moment.

To end this post, here is a Windows NT 4.0 screenshot for comparison.

allgoodnamesareused

I don't know why, but the Windows NT Explorer thing on the start menu looks ugly. Apart from that, NewShell is quite good.

dosbox

I remember Windows XP still having the old W3.1 Program Manager and File Manager.

SomeGuy

I don't know why, but the Windows NT Explorer thing on the start menu looks ugly.

That is because there is no font smoothing in that graphic, and the choice of an italic font makes the pixilation worse. But it was clearly just a quick placeholder for a better logo.

Anyway, good stuff. Remember back in the day people really wanted this kind of shell, although there weren't very many NT users yet. You don't really show the advantages of the desktop itself, such as user files and folders on the desktop, document templates in the right-click menu, or the built in file browser.

calvinb

This is pretty late in the timeframe of Chicago development, so nothing much changed. You don't see the new control panels or permissions or stuff like that, as it had to be adapted to NT - which 4.x did, as well as tweaking the kernel.

I don't see much about the document support, and I think that's because no applications in 3.x did register anything in that menu.

Speaking of the document metaphor, it seemed to collapse quickly. Windows went further than the Mac OS (and Cairo would take it further) but no one seemed to care. The new menu was left to rot, as applications didn't really support it or OLE (which also never took off) other than Office and mimics like Visio. Spatial file managers just created window spam.

Nowadays, we see the application metaphor has won. Mobile has just reinforced this. Users and developers didn't seem to like the model.

theotherosproject

SomeGuy wrote:

You don't really show the advantages of the desktop itself, such as user files and folders on the desktop, document templates in the right-click menu, or the built in file browser.

Sure, I'll cover that later together with a few other programs.

ampharos wrote:

I don't see much about the document support, and I think that's because no applications in 3.x did register anything in that menu.

Makes sense. Maybe I'll dig a bit in the registry if there is such a thing in NT 3.51.

BlueSun

theotherosproject wrote:

More programs running. At this point, I noted that the borders were not just thick most of the time, they were also inconsistent. I suspect it is to differentiate the windows which can or cannot be resized.

Those thin 1 pixel black boarders were used to differentiate 16 bit applications from 32 bit applications.

calvinb

I'm pretty sure Calculator and Minesweeper are 32-bit on NT 3. I think that style is set for fixed-size windows that don't declare a certain style? That would include 16-bit applications, as they don't know about that style.

BlueSun

ampharos wrote:

I'm pretty sure Calculator and Minesweeper are 32-bit on NT 3. I think that style is set for fixed-size windows that don't declare a certain style? That would include 16-bit applications, as they don't know about that style.

Could be.

But I only recall seeing it on 16 bit apps, that's why I arrived at the conclusion that only 16 bit apps showed the 1 pixel border. I can't recall if I ever saw it on a resizable window or not.

Can anyone find some documentation about this? I'm searching now, so far not having any luck.

calvinb

Regular resizable 16-bit windows show normal chrome.

I know something from Works 4.x had that style and it was 32-bit. Pulling things out of my ass, but I'll have to try a FixedSingle form in .NET.

I also don't think NT >=4.x displays that type of border.

BlueSun

ampharos wrote:

Regular resizable 16-bit windows show normal chrome.

I know something from Works 4.x had that style and it was 32-bit. Pulling things out of my ass, but I'll have to try a FixedSingle form in .NET.

I also don't think NT >=4.x displays that type of border.

XP does it too. I just ran the Windows 3.11 version of minesweeper on my XP VM:



And also, as you can see, write is open in the background confirming that resizable windows show the normal border.

Mind == blown. I always thought all 16 bit apps showed the 1 pixel border.

SomeGuy

The 1px border is for metrics compatiblity. It has been a while since I looked at it, but as I recall there is a version flag associated with each resource that can affect the way dialog boxes look (no 3-dness). This is also affected by the OS version flag set in the PE executable.

So if you run the 32-bit NT 3.1 Winemine under NT4/9x or later you should get the black 1 px border.

If you change the OS version flag in the EXE to 4.00 it will change to a 3-d border, but then the content will be shifted a bit to the right.

SoftPCMuseum

The most likely reason for why the Shell Technology Update (NewShell) even existed was that Microsoft was most likely starting development of Windows NT 4.0 at around that time. Not only does it change the version number from 3.51 (Windows NT 3.51) to 4.0 (presumably Windows NT 4.0), but in the release notes, it also states that the functionality will be part of a future version of Windows NT. In addition, if you look at the file contents, you will see that it clearly replaces several major system files (including even core system files).

Also, some of the very earliest Windows NT 4.0 pre-release versions were very similar in appearance and functionality, but had several new features added since then, mainly from Windows 95 if I remember correctly. I remember that a beta release (4.00.1130) was released to testers after Windows 95 was released, but was still developing away from Windows NT 3.51, and several newly added features were highly broken (for example, the Printers folder), at least from what I remember of using it.