Betta Desktop

Betta Desktop is one of many Visual Basic.net projects I have sank WAY too much time into. Its also one of those projects that has been very on and off for me. I take breaks, jump back into, take a break, and so on. Betta Desktop is effectively a full-screen program designed to act as a replacement desktop computing experience, running on top of Windows as an overlay. It cant fully replace the Windows desktop per-se, but is instead offered as a different, custom experience of sorts, provided with its own set of custom built-in programs and features such as web browser, notepad and more.

This isnt the first desktop simulator program I have worked on, and Betta does take ideas from the old "PowerPoint OS" projects from back in the day, a project idea to make a functioning desktop or operating system-like project using the advanced features of PowerPoint, such as VB.NET intigration and macros. An idea I also dabbled in. Betta Desktop is effectively a spiritual successor to my own attempt at a 'PowerPoint OS' style project, that I later tried to retool with VB.NET as an easy-to-use desktop interface made for the tech illiterate within my family.

If you want to learn more about the "PowerPoint OS" fandom, click here.

The idea for Betta Desktop is to build a functioning desktop experience, built solely using assets or design ideas from beta or unreleased versions of Windows and other Microsoft products. Unused graphics include desktop backgrounds, user icons, system icons, sound schemes or other audio, as well as design ideas that were either scrapped or changed many times prior to the final release. Most of the assets or design ideas come from development builds of "Microsoft Codename Whistler" (finalised as Windows XP) or the unreleased precursor to Windows Whistler called "Project Neptune".

One of the main assets used throughout Betta Desktop, and also what gave the project its name, is the Betta fish graphic. It's argued the fish icon was used as an intentional pun. The graphic was used for development builds of Windows 8. A similar image was used during the development of Windows 7.

Desktop

Looking very much like a Windows XP desktop, with green-blue taskbar and grassy-hill background image. Partially intentional, but the final version is planned to use a different default background. Notice the desktop icons, Start button, taskbar and clock. The desktop also shows the Betta Desktop "Tips" dialogue, an idea taken from Windows 95 and 98, providing quick tips to the user about how to use the product.

Logon Screen

The general design for this screen takes queues from prototype versions of the Welcome screen found in the Neptune project and early Whistler builds. The Logon screen also has "sibling" screens where the "welcome" text is changed to "locked" if the user locks Betta, "logging on/logging off" if the user logs on or off respectively, and "shutting down" if the user exits Betta to Windows. The Logon screen is currently unfinished as to when the screenshot was taken, as the final version is planned to use a dark blue graphic.

Start Screen

There are several ironies to screen. A Windows 8-style Start screen was not the originally intended interface. A more Windows XP-style menu was prototyped, but it didnt work as intended. The full screen Start screen was created as a backup with the plan to copy features to the menu interface later, with a possiblity for keeping both interfaces and allowing the user the choice of what to use. Ultimately, I succumed due to my limited programming skill and getting overwhelmed, and completely removed what existed of the menu interface (design and code) and the Start Screen stuck. I then decided to focus on tweaking and finalising the Start Screen.

Screensaver

As of the time this screenshot, this current build of Betta only has 2 options for the screensaver. There is content planned to add as additional options.

Desktop with some programs

Here is the desktop again but also showing some of the functioning dedicated programs, such as the "About Betta" dialogue, Internet Explorer, Control Panel, as well as working taskbar buttons, a very recent feature I got to work.