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Packard Bell Navigator 3.5
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The company that made Packard Bell Navigator was called Ark Interface
Inc. and was a subsidiary of Packard Bell. Ark Interfaces separated from
Packard Bell and became an independent company named Xsides - for a time
they produced a kind of toolbar that displayed underneath the Windows Start
menu outside of the normal "desktop" - working around certain restrictions
Microsoft had placed on OEMs forbidding them from altering the preloaded
Windows desktop appearance
It seems that this version of PB Navigator has some extra stuff in
it that isn't used. These appear to be part of the application but were
still in development at the time this version was released.
By finding the line HOME=0 in the nav.ini file, changing the value to
1, erasing the USR1 folder, and restarting PB Navigator this alternate
map appears.
This second virtual house provides direct navigation to Workspace, Kidspace
and two new rooms: Game Room, and Arc Foyer.
The Arc Foyer appears to be a replacement for the Navigator Living
Room that is used in later versions of PB Navigator.
The stairs going up are the same stairs visible going down in the Workspace.
In this mode clicking the stairs in the Workspace will bring you here.
This weird looking room is the "Game room." There is not much to click
on here in this version. Like Kidspace the background resizes to fit the
full screen if it is larger than 640*480.
In conclusion, the virtual environments of both PB Navigator and MS-Bob
eventually proved to be unpopular. Compare these with modern user interfaces
such as the stereo-like interface of MacOS X. Rather than use a virtual
reality environment with virtual appliances, people have chosen to make
the computer just another appliance and leave reality environments... to
reality.
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