NewWave is a discontinued object-oriented graphical desktop environment and office productivity tool for PCs running early versions of Microsoft Windows (beginning with 2.0). It was developed by Hewlett-Packard and introduced commercially in 1988. It was used on the HP Vectras and other IBM-compatible PCs running Windows.

From a user perspective NewWave ran on top of Windows and completely replaced the standard Windows Desktop and Program Manager user interface with its own object-oriented desktop interface.

HP promoted NewWave until the release of Windows 95, at which time further development of the product ceased due to incompatibility with the new operating system. The NewWave GUI (together with the contemporaneous NeXTSTEP GUI) introduced the shaded "3-D look and feel" that was later widely adopted.

HP encouraged independent software vendors to produce versions of applications which took advantage of NewWave functionality, allowing their data to be handled as objects instead of files. One early example was Samna Corporation (later acquired by Lotus) who produced an edition of their Microsoft Windows word processor Ami Pro entitled "Ami Pro for NewWave". On June 20, 1988 Microsoft Corporation and Hewlett-Packard issued a press release announcing the inclusion of NewWave support in an up-coming release Microsoft Excel.

NewWave featured icons, scheduled scripts in the form of "agents", and "hot connects." The “NewWave Office” term had been used previously to describe the main NewWave user desktop.

Overview

thumb|right|alt=HP NewWave v1 environment block diagram|HP NewWave v1 environment block diagram

In its original November 1987 press release Hewlett-Packard described NewWave as “an application environment designed to provide personal computer users with a single method to access data and files from multiple sources on a company’s network”. It was developed by HP’s Personal Software Division (PSD) in Santa Clara, California, United States, as part of their distributed computing environment strategy,

Contextual online help

In addition to MS-Windows-style indexed help articles NewWave introduced a context-sensitive help facility. This allowed a user to click on a ‘Help’ menu option which added a query symbol to the mouse arrow; once switched into this ‘help mode’ the user could click on any part of the NewWave environment or any menu command to have the help for that item displayed in a pop-up window.

Computer-based training

Working in conjunction with the NewWave Agent the computer-based training functionality of NewWave allowed developers to build interactive lessons into the desktop environment and the applications themselves. This allowed users to learn with actual live applications in a non-destructive way. The feature was dropped in later versions of NewWave due to the increased disk requirements it imposed and the limited hard disk space available in PCs of the time.

Agent

The NewWave Agent was a task-recording and execution facility, which could work across multiple applications. Users could record any sequence of tasks performed within the NewWave environment. Recorded tasks generated a BASIC-like source-code, which could be repeated unmodified, or edited and expanded to create sophisticated automated and interactive activities.

Built-in and bridged applications

NewWave included some built-in applications, which were fully integrated with the Object Management Facility, NewWave Agent, Online Help and Computer Based Training features. Non-native NewWave applications could be integrated into the environment using “advanced bridges”, allowing their live data to be embedded in compound documents. The standard end-user version of HP NewWave included bridges for HP’s own PC applications, such as HP Graphics gallery, MS Windows tools (calculator, calendar, notepad etc.) and many common third-party applications. Users could also create their own bridges to other applications using the included Bridge Builder tool. Bridges could be exported for use on other NewWave-enabled systems and were often shared amongst the NewWave user community.

NewWave Write

HP described NewWave Write as a basic-to-intermediate level “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWIG) word processor with support for compound documents.

NewWave Mail

NewWave Mail was available as a separate native NewWave product, which could act as a client to HP’s proprietary DeskManager and OpenMail email server solutions.

NewWave enabled third-party applications included:

HP NewWave was never adopted as a mainstream end-user environment although it was adopted by a number of corporate clients as the basis for office productivity projects including:

  • BT BoaT - Major British Telecom office automation project.
  • Royal Insurance - desktop project implemented by the Liverpool-based insurance company.
  • N&P - National and Provincial building society - based in Bradford.
  • TSB Trust Company - Desktop architecture.

HP had some success in licensing NewWave to other hardware manufacturers:

  • Data General repackaged NewWave as CEO Object Office, and introduced it as an extension to their CEO Office office automation software.
  • NCR used NewWave as the basis for their Cooperation software.

Legacy

In January 1990 HP stated its intention to provide NewWave capabilities on Unix with Motif and on OS/2 with Presentation Manager.

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||2.0

||1989

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||3.0

||1990

||D1704B

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||5¼-inch / 3½-inch FD

||3½-inch floppy disk: option AA8 / 5¼-inch floppy disk: option AA9

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||4.0

||1992

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||’’HP NewWave 4 Working Model’’ evaluation version.

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||4.0

||1992

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||4.1

||1992

||D1704D

||C.02.00

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||Branded as HP NewWave Office 4.1

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||4.5

||1995

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||C.03.00

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||English language version only

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||4.5 patch

||July 1995

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||C.03.04

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||US English language version only

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Further reading

Articles in the August 1989 issue of the Hewlett-Packard Journal (volume 40, number 4):

  • "An Overview of the HP NewWave Environment" by Ian J. Fuller.
  • "An Object-Based User Interface for the HP NewWave Environment" by Peter S. Showman.
  • "The NewWave Object Management Facility" by John A. Dysart.
  • "The NewWave Office - the user interface's tools and methods" by Beatrice Lam, Scott A. Hanson & Anthony J. Day.
  • "Agents and the HP NewWave Application Program Interface" by Glenn R. Stearns.
  • "An extensible agent task language - creating scripts in the Hewlett-Packard NewWave environment" by Barbara B. Packard & Charles H. Whelan.
  • "The HP NewWave Environment Help Facility" by Vicky Spilman & Eugene J. Wong.
  • "NewWave Computer-Based Training Development Facility" by Lawrence A. Lynch-Freshner, R. Thomas Watson, Brian B. Egan & John J. Jencek.
  • "Encapsulation of Applications in the NewWave Environment" by William M. Crow.
  • "Product Development Using Object-Oriented Software Technology" by Thomas F. Kraemer.

References

  • http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1989-08.pdf
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20130616043057/http://www.managingchange.com/innoused/newwave.htm
  • http://www.guidebookgallery.org/articles/newwave
  • http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=183