SoftBreeze 3.0                    user interface/DOS
SoftShell Previews New User Interface
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
SoftShell has unveiled a new version of SoftBreeze, a user
interface that gives you task switching, an applications menu for
up to 200 programs, and file, disk, and memory management for POS
(Plain Old DOS).
 
SoftBreeze makes DOS easier to use and more powerful, but not in
the restrictive and limited ways of DOS shells. SoftShell uses
the term user interface to describe its product, saying the term
DOS Shell applies to products that require too much memory, offer
little added functionality, and are too clumsy for the
experienced user (for experienced users, SoftBreeze offers direct
command line access).
 
Version 3.0 is targeted at intermediate users who want to
bypass cumbersome DOS commands, the company says. The new
version incorporates an SAA-compatible menu structure that
displays your choices of applications, task switching, the file
manager, disk utilities, memory management, and customizing
(like Brightbill-Robert's HyperPad, corporate system
administrators can customize an individual's user interface).
You can also launch and view applications from data files.
 
SoftBreeze is a character-based application with a tree-style
file manager. The document manager allows you to link each file
to its application program. Each file name can be up to 60
characters long in the new version. You can search for file
names by name, part of name, or by who created it. The
program's proprietary programming language, called Nautilus,
allows you to use disk swapping to create virtual memory,
allowing you to toggle among the four management modules and up
to 10 applications.
 
You can also use the program to copy data from one application
to another. If you're not sure of the applications DOS name,
you can press the enter key, and you'll jump into a tree
diagram, where you then point and click at where you want to
copy. More than 100 common programs are automatically
incorporated into the menus if SoftBreeze finds them on the
disk when it's installed.
 
SoftBreeze runs on the IBM PC with 512K bytes of RAM and DOS
3.0 or higher. To support task switching, a full 640K is recom-
mended.
 
Price: $99.
 
Contact: SoftShell Systems, 1163 Triton Drive, Foster City, CA
94404, (415) 571-9000.
 
                              --- David L. Andrews
 
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