Workplace Shell
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The Workplace Shell (WPS) was an object-oriented desktop shell produced by IBM's Boca Raton development lab for OS/2 2.0. It was a radical shift away from the Program Manager type interface that earlier versions of OS/2 shared with Windows 3.x.
Workplace Shell objects were mostly written in C, glued together with an interface definition language called "SOM" (short for System Object Model), developed by IBM in their Austin, Texas lab. The classes were usually manipulable from Rexx programs.
These objects were shipped in DLL form, and could then be acted on by the user or other programs as if they were true objects, although one could dispute whether the SOM paradigm was close enough.
An interesting part of the WPS design allows for the developer of a class Y which extends a class X to execute an API which will go through the desktop and 'replace' all instances of class X with instances of class Y; i.e., almost a retroactive inheritance. This allows for many useful third-party desktop utilities that add functionality to existing objects (usually folders) without access to IBM's source code.
DFM (http://www.kaisersite.de/dfm/) (Desktop File Manager) is a Linux file manager for the X-Window System, inspired by the WPS.