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Commodore named their Amiga computer's first operating system Workbench 1.0 and continued with the Workbench name until version 3.1, when it was changed to AmigaOS, prompted by Apple renaming their propriety OS from "System" to "MacOS". Subsequently the Amiga computer used the name Workbench to refer only to the native graphical interface file manager and application launcher of the Amiga's operating system typically presented to users upon booting the Amiga. In that regard the Workbench GUI component was not required to boot the Amiga or run other applications, but was a standalone application listed in the startup-sequence script.
The Amiga Workbench used the metaphor of a workbench rather than the now standard desktop for exposing file management and application launching functionality. The Workbench application appeared similar to other consumer Operating Systems of the era by utilizing a trash can, menu bar, and icons to represent files, folder and volumes (filesystem devices). The underlying AmigaOS was much more advanced allowing the Workbench to launch multiple applications that could execute at the same time and communicate with each other. The Amiga used a two button mouse for left click and right menu.
The Amiga did not use filename extensions to normally distinguish file types. Instead the Workbench used a separate file of the same name but followed by .info. That was the only file extension Workbench recognized. This file supplied information such as the icon graphic to display, the application to launch with, etc, similar in many ways to a Windows .pif file. Most files were human recognized by name (32 cased characters) or associated icon, or by applications using embedded metadata. The common format containing open metadata was the Interchange File Format which allowed applications to access the known parts of even a completely foreign IFF format file.
The Workbench utilized the underlying API to provide the GUI interface. The actual Workbench in its executable format (loadWB AmigaDOS command + Workbench.library) was quite small only taking a fraction of an Amiga 880 kB 3.5" floppy disc or other medium. Workbench.library in its first versions even occupied no space on system floppy discs, because it was part of the system ROM. Starting from 2.0 it became a shared library in Libs: and could be replaced by third-party GUIs.
The operating system library API's required by Workbench were stored in ROM, or (on the earliest Amigas) loaded into WCS/WOM (Lockable/Write Once Memory) by the Kickstart system. Applications launched from either the CLI or Workbench executed equivalently, with both having full GUI functionality. Workbench launched applications were meant to report their successful launch back the Workbench, but this was not a requirement and few actually did. The CLI was entirely graphically based; the Amiga did not support character mapped displays.
Underlying Workbench is the Intuition.library windowing system. This library controlled the logistics of clipping, rendering and preserving overlapping screens, windows and gadgets (graphical elements; equivalent to widgets.) The graphics.library provided software as well as hardware rendering. The exec.library handled low-level functions such as input from the keyboard and mouse, passing messages to programs, allocating memory and task switching.
The Amiga workbench follows the interface paradigm of a standard workbench of manual labour. The desktop itself is called Work-bench, the programs are called tools, program attributes (options) are called tooltypes, directories are called drawers (and there is a closet drawer icon representing directories on the screen of Workbench), data files are considered projects, etc. This may be considered somewhat unusual for a modern user, but in the early age of computer desktop GUIs, it was clear enough to users who approached a computer for the first time, and were generally unaccustomed to computer usage and computing science in general.
The only idiom of Amiga Workbench that is also found in other operating systems with more or less the same meaning is Utilities, which means the small programs that exist to enhance the computer's usability—for example the Calculator utility in Amiga, which is stored in the Utility drawer, similar to the Windows calculator.
In comparison to the competing Mac OS and Atari, the Amiga Workbench featured, as the default, a 4 color blue desktop screen with color icons at 640 x 200 NTSC American standard or 640 x 256 on European PAL television sets. This is in contrast to the 512 x 342 black and white interface presented by the Mac, and the Amiga user was also free to create and modify system and program icons, while, in the same time Atari TOS featured only default system icons whose appearance could not be modified.
It was a deeply customizable interface. Users could customize all four colours and choose from two different resolutions (640 x 200 or 640 x 400 on NTSC, or 640 x 256 or 640 x 512 on PAL systems). In later revisions, the TV or TV-monitor overscan could be adjusted. User could change the aspect of program icons replacing it with newer ones with different color combination. Users could also take a "snapshot" of icons and windows so the icons will remain on the desktop at coordinates chosen by user and windows will open at the desired size.
This freedom of choice and the multitude of different desktop colors and aspects chosen by any single user was sometimes seen as chaotic interface by people new to the Amiga and its interface. It could present icons of unusual size, and quite different from the original system ones, depending only on personal choice and the taste of the user. There were also no obliged user interface design guidelines regarding fixed menu options for software in general (i.e. the user must learn the various orderings of basic commands like Load, Save, Open, Close, Quit, etc.). This fact was sometimes argued as a diminishing feature of Amiga by its detractors. Still today some historical GUI sites like guidebook gallery[1] presented Amiga Workbench as:
"Unique (if slightly chaotic) GUI for Amiga machines".
The 1.x series of Workbench defaults to a distinctive 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). Versions 1.1 consists mostly of bug fixes and, like version 1.0, was distributed only for the Amiga 1000.
Until AmigaOS 2.0 with its GUI Workbench 2.0, there was no unified look and feel design standard - application developers had to write their own widgets (both buttons and menus) if they want to enhance standard basic widgets, with Intuition providing minimal support. With Workbench 2.0 gadtools.library was created, which provided standard widget sets, the Amiga User Interface Style Guide,[2] which explained how applications should be laid out for consistency. Intuition was improved with BOOPSI (Basic Object Oriented Programming system for Intuition) which enhanced the system with an object oriented interface with a system of classes in which every class individuate a single widget or describes an interface event. It can be used to program Object Oriented interfaces into Amiga at any level.
Workbench 2.0 also added support for public screens. Instead of the Workbench screen being the only shareable screen, applications could create their own named screens to share with other applications.
Workbench 2.0 introduced AmigaGuide, a simple text-only hypertext markup scheme and browser, for providing online help inside applications. It also introduced Installer, a standard software installation program, driven by a LISP-like scripting language.
Finally, Workbench 2.0 rectified the problem of applications hooking directly into the input-events stream to capture keyboard and mouse movements, sometimes locking up the whole system. Workbench 2.0 provided Commodities, a standard interface for modifying or scanning input events. This included a standard method for specifying global "hotkey" key-sequences, and a Commodities Exchange registry for the user to see what commodities were running.
Version 3.0 was originally shipped with the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 computers. Version 3.0 added datatypes support and Workbench could load any background image in any format if required datatype was installed. This feature was also used in Multiview. Its capabilities were directly related to the datatypes installed in Devs:Datatypes.
This workbench version was part of AmigaOS 3.5 developed by Haage & Partner in 1999.
Workbench changed the complete look and feel of its interface. A new blue desktop, resembling the first Amiga Workbench 1.0 was now available to users, but with many improvements over to the first AmigaOS desktop release, like presenting 2D icons that look isometric 3D, with a high range of color schemes ready to use. It replaced the all-metal gray 4/8 colors interface that was used on AmigaOS from release 2.0 up to 3.1 with its embossed 3D icons.
Support for NewIcons and various other third party GUI enhancements to improve elder Amiga interfaces were made obsolete by integrating those patches into system.
The 3.9 version of Workbench was again developed by Haage&Partner and released in 2000. The main features in this Workbench version was the introduction of the AmiDOCK, a program start bar. Other new features were new preference tools and improved desktop watch clock.
This new Workbench, called Workbench 4.0[1] has been rewritten to became fully PowerPC compatible. It was part of AmigaOS 4.0, and released in 2006. Some parts of AmigaOS and Workbench 3.5/3.9 could not be included into this new OS release as they belonged to Haage & Partner, and Amiga inc. did not acquire any license of it.
Since the fourth Developer Pre-Release Update a new technique is adopted and the screens are draggable in any direction.[3] Drag and drop of Workbench icons between different screens is possible too.
Also in Workbench 4.0 were PowerPC native version of Amidock, TrueType/OpenType fonts and movie player named "Action" with DivX and MPEG-4 support.
In AmigaOS 4.1, a new Startup preferences feature was added which replaced WBStartup drawer. Additional enhancements were a new icon set to complement higher screen resolutions, new window themes including drop shadows, AmiDock with true transparency, scalable icons and Workbench with auto-update feature.[4]
The icons that Workbench uses to represent the files in a volume or a drawer are stored in special .info files, with the name of the .info file matching the name of the file it represents. For example, the icon for NotePad, a text editor, is found in the file NotePad.info.
The .info file includes the graphical representation of the icon and its position in the volume or drawer window. The icon also specifies the type of the file, as used by Workbench. Workbench recognises five different file types:[5]
An additional three file types are available and are intended for future expansion:
Of these three file types, only "App Icons" currently are used by any part of Workbench/AmigaOS.
Tool files can include "tool types" in the .info file. These are used as configuration options for the program. Each tool type is a single line of text, which can optionally include parameters, written after an = sign. Tool types can be commented out by writing them in parentheses. For example, the tooltype "CX_POPKEY=ctrl alt f1" says that the application (a Commodity) will pop up the user interface in response to the key sequence Ctrl-Alt-F1.
The colours used in the icon are normally only stored as indices to the Amiga Workbench screen's current palette. Because of this, the icons' colour scheme is inherently tied to the chosen hues in the screen's palette, and choosing non-standard colours can give the icons an ugly appearance. This problem was party solved by a third-party system called NewIcons, which adds additional features to the standard .info files. Unlike normal Workbench icons, NewIcons include actual RGB colour information, and the system tries its best to match the icons' colour hues to those in the screen palette.
Since AmigaOS 3.5, Workbench supports icons with up to 256 colors. This release of AmigaOS features the GlowIcons icon set by Matt Chaput. With AmigaOS 3.5, a screen-palette-independent system is used. The 4.0 icons, designed by Martin Merz, can use a palette of 24 bit each.
Both AROS and MorphOS support PNG icons natively. PNG allows using full 24-bit palette with alpha blending. On Amiga Workbench PNG icons are supported through plugins.
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