Windows 3.0 beta

[Xammer]

Was there ever a beta of Windows 3.0?

[hjort]

According to the Microsoft OS checklist, there was no beta of Windows 3.0. However there is a fake build 2.9 mady by Air101.

[zchri9]

yeah i have never heard of a beta for it

[flashstar]

It seems quite odd. Would Microsoft simply not make a beta for Windows 3.0? They must have had some revisions.

[ddrmaxromance]

Well, obviously there was a few prototypes for the Windows 3.0 environment. It was probably very top secret, thus, making it harder to get. The only reason why Chicago and up are easy to get (beta-wise) is through the power of the internet and CD-ROM. As Chicago became more of an internet/networking OS, I'm pretty sure many at the time would upload the software to servers, as well as burn it to a disc, as multimedia CD-ROMs became more acknowledged as a PC standard.

In my view of Windows 3.0 betas, I believe it looked a lot like like Windows 2.0, except with extra gray colors instead of just the black and white everywhere.

[louisw3]

Of course there were betas, but they were under a strict NDA... they didn't see the wide release that Chicago did back in the day. You have to remember that Windows 3.0 started out as a 'skunk works' project. And MS knew it was going to [censored] off IBM so they kept it quiet. Especially as they were going to put a DOS Extender at the heart of Windows 3.0 basically allowing Windows to leapfrog over OS/2.

You can read about it here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/murrays/archive ... dozer.aspx

and here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/c ... 5ddAtJENcJ

Windows & OS/2 built on 'MS-DOS 4.0 AKA European DOS AKA Multitasking DOS'. While OS/2 went for a straight protected mode OS, with drivers that can function in both real mode & protected mode (the patents you see on MS OS/2), Windows 3.0 sits on a Dos Extender allowing it to grab more memory. 386 Enhanced mode adds v86 support, demand paging, and VXD's.

When Windows 3.0 was selling a million+ copies a month, that was the final straw for MS. Sadly MS put forth all this effort into Windows to get around IBM's involvement in OS/2. If MS did it's own thing, they would have shipped something more like Windows/386 except built on OS/2 instead of MS-DOS. Oh well, consumers would have had a real 32bit OS before 1990.

[xmsxmsxm]

Excellent points, louisw3. I would just add that, by all accounts, pre-3.0 Windows wasn't really successful enough for anyone to want to bother disseminating leaked betas. The massive, revolutionary success of 3.0 turned the industry on its head. Add to that the heightened level of security at MS as they had so much riding on the release, and it's not surprising that whatever 3.0 betas may have existed have never seen the light of day.

[Kelton2]

A beta for Windows 3.0 must have existed. I doubt MS would have just coded it with NO beta builds at all. But sadly, any that do exist have not been leaked. There is no Windows 3.0 beta.

[AlphaBeta]

I remember mrpijey said that he tested a Windows 3.0 Beta, but he doesn't remember the build number and the disks are lost/corrupted.

@mrpijey: Do you remember how did the UI look like?

[xmsxmsxm]

If that's true, I'd love to hear all about it too. Win 3.0 was the first version of Windows I ever used and has special nostalgic value, so even just hearing a description of what an early beta was like would be fascinating to me.

[epiccolton26]

There was a beta of Windows 3.1, but on of 3.0. Though I do remember seeing a website/blog containing some old icons that were made in the development period of Windows 3.0 by a graphics designer named Susan.

[Kelton2]

The Susan you referred to was actually Susan Kare, the same lady that designed the "Happy Mac" on startup of pre Mac OS X Macs. She also designed some card layouts for Windows Solitaire (I think).

[os2fan2]

Susan Kare used to have a more extensive list of icons on her page, These are the icons she designed for Win30.



It's interesting that they stuck with the OS/2 icons, and waited until some agreements to expire until they used these icons.

[SpiralVortex]

Susan Kare used to have a more extensive list of icons on her page, These are the icons she designed for Win30.

It's interesting that they stuck with the OS/2 icons, and waited until some agreements to expire until they used these icons.

Aha, that explains it then. I'd seen that screenshot before and initially thought "Windows 3.0 beta!" The date (1988) suggests it was just after Windows/286 and Windows/386 were released, which would seem logical. The directory (WIN386) is a clear reference to the old, separate XT/286 and 386 versions of Windows.
The UI elements looking 3D but somewhat "off" would fit - presumably the minimise/maximise controls were changed to arrows to look more familiar to Windows 2 users, but they bear a striking resemblance to the ones used in Windows 95 (and indeed all the way to 8.1 today!)
The minimise icon being a square (representing the minimised program icon) rather than an elongated rectangle (representing a taskbar button, or the minimised window appearance of Windows 95 onwards) also makes sense.

The only really jarring thing was the presence of Windows 3.1 icons, when Windows 3.0 launched with considerably more drab, grey-themed icons. Waiting for some OS/2 agreements to expire would explain that too. (Eagle-eyed viewers may spot the spaces in filenames too, which is odd...)

As such, I'd bet that that is indeed a very early screenshot of Windows 3.0... taken at face value, it's two years before the release date!

[jagotu]

For some reason, it reminded me of this, although it may not be exactly related:

It comes from my copy of "Microsoft® Office 97 - Developer's Handbook" (Czech copy of course, "Tvorba aplikací v Microsoft® Office 97 pomocí jazyka Visual Baisc" to be precise).
It's from a chapter talking about GUIs.

A rough translation:

Overdecoration isn't the right thing for a good GUI
Few years before, when Microsoft developers were loudly requesting overdecorated graphics, project designers created a collection of icons. Some of them are presented on Picture 3-2. This parody had its joke: GUI graphics are to be judged not based on sexappeal, but on the ability to tell information.
<Image>
Picture 3-2. Microsoft designers created these icons to show developers their true purpose: informative graphics are good, not overdecorated ones.

[os2fan2]

Susan Kare's portfolio page on Microsoft used to have three pictures there (sol.exe and two others). One of the others is in my previous post. The remaining one is an un-used wallpaper for Windows 3.0,



She also did the some warp 4 icons as well:

[jagotu]

Some screenshots of Windows 3.0 beta for you:



Source

[WinPC]

Some screenshots of Windows 3.0 beta for you:

We have no proof whatsoever that those are screenshots of a Windows 3.0 pre-release version. The screenshots are not any different from the final version other than for the default color scheme, and the article itself is from May 21st, 1990.

[carlaum1]

The unused wallpaper for Windows 3.0 colors are wrong. The GIF compression may be the cause.
Here's the corrected colors version, ready for use in any PC with Windows 3.x.

[os2fan2]

The key to Windows 3.0 is dosx.exe. This gave Microsoft access to more than real-mode memory, and they could use things like we see in the program. But there was still the thorny issue that IBM still had access to this stuff, so they were not going to do much with Susan Kare's work in this release.

The icons still resemble OS/2 1.3, partly because the programs were first made for IBM, and partly because they want to keep a constant set of icons across platforms. This means that Windows 3.0 looks a lot like OS/2 1.3.

PMEXEC "Desktop Manager" becomes first WINEXEC and then PROGMAN. The menu system in DOSSHELL is also called 'program manager'. The group icons are identical, but the actual groups work differently. In PMEXEC, these are lists in separate boxes, with or without icons. In Progman, they are icon fields with icons. The bug about all the icons dropped on a group appearing as a list or long line, is replicated in all Windows versions.

Also PMEXEC can create by DDE, groups from Presentation Manager for Window NT 3.x and 4.x.

PMFILE becoems WINFILE, "File Manager", largely unchanged.

PMCPL gives WINCPL eventually CONTROL. Windows 3.x opens an icon-field, but this is resident inside the program itself. In WinMME 3.0, the original control.exe becomes control3.exe, and in Win31, it becomes MAIN.CPL. OS/2 Wincpl is a dialog-book of settings, selected from the menu, this is found in Windows control.exe

WINHELP is a descendent of Quickhelp, and still recognises QH files (eg try opening help.hlp in any Windows). Both are compressed RTF documents. OS/2 uses the then-ancient IPF system, which precedes OS/2 by several years.

NOTEPAD is a descendent of E, (in OS/2 1.2 for example), but is mainly an advert for the text common control, which is why it has the woofy 50k limit on text files.

[jagotu]

Some screenshots of Windows 3.0 beta for you:

We have no proof whatsoever that those are screenshots of a Windows 3.0 pre-release version. The screenshots are not any different from the final version other than for the default color scheme, and the article itself is from May 21st, 1990.

"When Microsoft announces Windows 3.0 tommorow", " Network managers who resorted to smoke and mirrors to run past versions of Windows on their LANs will find relief in Windows 3.0, according to beta testers and industry observers." and several other mentions of beta made me think that it is, infact, a pre-release version. I may be wrong though.

[asir23]

There was never a Windows 3.0 Beta. Plus Windows 2.9 is fake.

[jagotu]

There was never a Windows 3.0 Beta. Plus Windows 2.9 is fake.

Yes, that's true. Windows 3.0 just suddenly appeared on Microsoft's harddrive out of nowhere. </sarcasm>
Of course it had a beta. When you develop something, you have to go through betas. No beta is currently avaliable != there was no beta at all.

[os2fan2]

There probably was a windows 3.0 beta, but it was never aired. I suspect it was in-house, because Microsoft wanted to keep dosx secret and the Win30 / OS2 split from IBM as long as possible.

[WinPC]

Well, everyone, here it is, a screenshot of a real pre-release version of Windows 3.0, in this case Windows 3.00.13, confirmed to exist by Calculator author Craig Brockschmidt himself:

Source: http://www.kraigbrockschmidt.com/mm/Chapter02.htm