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DOS Doors 0011a

by atrocity
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Speed & Stability

DOSDoors is a full scripter written in FreeBASIC, and because of that, speed isn't it's strongest point and never will be. However the GUI was relatively stable, only crashing when I got cutesy and ran to many of the same application. Sometimes when I opened a lot of applications at once, the early ones wouldn't draw all the way. However, as this is an early alpha, I was pretty impressed.

Entertainment Applications

The only thing really entertaining in DOS Doors is the statistics application. It was interesting to see how different actions effected the FPS. I should note that there are dead links in the menu to some games, once those links are working, this score will go up for sure.

Productivity Applications

There is the start to a calculator application, but not much else.

File Management

This GUI doesn't have this feature.

Bells & Whistles

DOS Doors is a relatively small download, has SVGA graphics, and the start to some documentation. It could really use more information on how to write scripts, but as it's an early release and things might change a lot, it's understandable.

Multitasking

This is the area where DOS Doors design shines through. DOS Doors is designed with multitasking in mind, and I was able to open many applications at the same time without issue. However I did run into some issues if I opened to many copies of the same application to quickly, I'm not sure why that was.

Launcher

Right now the launcher is inflexible and just launches the built in applications. If you move a window close then the menu draws under the window and you cant click the options, hopefully we'll see a more dynamic launcher in the future.

Customization

At this time there is no customization options, I suppose you could change the "cupcake" image file to another one to change the wallpaper or modify the scripts, but that's about it.

Final

Overall it's obvious that DOSDoors is still an alpha release. However, it's also obvious that there is a lot of potential and if atrocity sticks with it, DOSDoors could be a great GUI.

2021 Brandon Cornell