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Clever programming (a library named Janus, after the two-faced Roman god of doorways) made it possible to run PC software in an Amiga window without use of emulation. At the introduction of the Sidecar the crowd was stunned to see the MS-DOS version of Microsoft Flight Simulator running at full speed in an Amiga window on the Workbench.
The Amiga Workbench uses the metaphor of a workbench (i.e. a workbench of manual labor), rather than the now standard desktop metaphor, for representing file system organization. The desktop itself is called Workbench and uses the following representations: drawers (instead of folders) for directories, tools for executable programs, projects ...
Amiga Workbench 1.0 Workbench 1.3.2 and Extras floppy disks (German version) Workbench 1.0 was released with the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000 , in 1985. The 1.x versions of Workbench used a blue-and-orange color scheme, designed to give high contrast on even the worst of television screens (the colors can be changed by the user).
Since Workbench 2.1 an Amiga Guide system for O.S. inline help files and reading manuals with hypertext formatting elements was launched in AmigaOS and based on a viewer called simply "AmigaGuide" and it has been included as standard feature on the Amiga system.
The Amiga Forever [2] emulation package offers legal copies of Kickstart, Workbench and various games. Another legal option for Amiga emulation is the AROS Research Operating System, which is available as free software. An AROS boot ROM can be used instead of Kickstart, which allows booting the m68k port of AROS from a floppy or CD image. [3]
The native Amiga windowing system is called Intuition, which manages the rendering of screens, windows and basic widgets. However, until AmigaOS 2.0 there was no standardized look and feel , and often application developers had to write their own non-standard widgets (both buttons and menus), with Intuition providing little support.
Also created on Amiga, were the multimedia interactive TV non-immersive Virtual reality exploring software Mandala from Vivid Group Inc., [b] and the Virtuality System Virtuality 1000 CS 3D VRML all-immersive simulator from W-Industries (then Virtuality Inc.), [b] for game entertainment in big arcade installations and theme parks, based on A3000.
Like most GUIs of the day, Amiga's Intuition followed Xerox's lead anteceding solutions, but pragmatically, a command line interface was also included and it extended the functionality of the platform. Later releases added more improvements, like support for high-color Workbench screens and 3D aspect.