
Windows 98 Icons are Great (2015) - maxmouchet
https://alexmeub.com/old-windows-icons/
======
alxlaz
Not just the icons, the entire user interface was excellent. You had:

\- Clear indication of whether something was clickable or not, vs. everything
flat and featureless

\- Good contrast

\- Normal-sized widgets which left enough room for content vs. the huge
widgets we use today for some reason (it's weird for me to say this, but Linux
desktops are the worst offenders here). I get why they're important on touch-
enabled systems but that's no reason to use them anywhere else.

\- Useable scrollbars, no hamburger menus

\- And -- although Windows-specific: the Start menu was something you could
actually use.

The state of testing, examination and debates about user interfaces was also
light years ahead of what we see today. I was genuinely fascinated about what
my colleagues who did UI design were doing, and about the countless models
they developed and metrics they used. If it was the same bikeshedding we see
today, they sure as hell knew how to make it look like they were having a real
debate...

I suspect the reason behind this drop in quality is largely economical.
Fifteen years ago, you needed a great deal of understanding about perception,
semiotics, about computer graphics, and a remarkable degree of mastery of your
tools in order to produce an icon set. This made icons costly to develop, to a
point where it was pretty hard to explain it to managers why you _need_ to pay
a real designer a heap of money for a real icon because, dude, just look at
every other successful app on an OS X desktop!

~~~
rsync
"Not just the icons, the entire user interface was excellent."

Agreed. I strongly dislike the Windows _operating system_ but I miss very much
the Windows _user interface_ which was very well designed, consistent, and
optimized for real work.

One of the things I miss the most are the consistent, universal and wide-
ranging keyboard shortcuts. Not just key shortcuts for menu items, but
keystrokes that allowed you to move around dialog boxes, resize windows, etc.
OSX is largely terrible in this regard with even many common menu items
without shortcuts ...

~~~
IggleSniggle
Shoutout to Shortcat for providing something like "knowledge-free keyboard
shortcuts everywhere" on macOS. You hit a search key-chord (I use SHIFT-CMD-
SPACE) and it pops up a search modal making all UI elements keyboard
selectable. Usually the thing you want is 1 or 2 characters followed by
Return.

It honestly reminds me of the experience of navigating Windows menus with Alt-
and progressive keyboard shortcut learning, but flexible enough to handle
things like Electron applications that don't even have a Menu bar or settable
shortcuts.

Does anyone else use this or something similar?

[https://shortcatapp.com/](https://shortcatapp.com/)

~~~
Piskvorrr
Jetbrains' IDEA has the "Search everywhere" feature that...well...searches
everywhere - menus, commands, project files, etc. I'd love to have that for
every app in the OS.

~~~
trm42
Actually, that would be really, really awesome once you get used to Jetbrains'
way of working. It's so unusual to be able to search for all the
configuration, functionality, code and files in the same place.

------
laurentdc
I feel like older user interfaces treated me like an adult.

Whatever I did on Solaris [1] or even early OS X [2] felt like I was doing
real work, important stuff, even if I was just messing around.

I don't know what changed, I use both Linux (Gnome 3) and macOS Mojave daily
but they both lack that polished "workstation" feel. Maybe it's all in my head
or I'm just getting old :/

[1]
[http://agilo.acjs.net/files/screenshot_solaris.png](http://agilo.acjs.net/files/screenshot_solaris.png)

[2]
[https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/picture-2-png.57621...](https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/picture-2-png.576210/)

~~~
TelmoMenezes
Our overall computing environment acquired a distinct
patronizing/infantilizing feel to it in the last decade. I don't think it's
only visual -- or even visual at all, not sure.

~~~
lozenge
We've gone from "the process has performed an illegal operation" and "file not
found" to "Oops!" and "we looked everywhere, but..."

~~~
bitwize
Again, pretend you're a normie and imagine how you'd react when you are told
that your computer has performed an _illegal_ operation.

That's the sort of phrasing you _don 't_ want to inflict on everyday users.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> Again, pretend you're a normie and

And right here is why modern tech is so condescending.

~~~
bitwize
Okay, then how about "pretend you're a human" as opposed to the lizard people
who design and write computer software. Spin it however you like. You still
have to make the distinction between techies and "the rest of us". Systems
have been designed that do not make this distinction and assume the user will
be able to figure everything out, the most notorious of which is Unix -- when
unadorned with Apple treacle, arguably one of the most user-hostile systems in
common use. Normies perceive Unix as being more arrogant than the systems
which "condescend" to them. It seems to say "Oh, you don't belong to the
super-secret cabal of users who know these arcane commands? Fuck you, then!"

~~~
zozbot123
> Systems have been designed that ... assume the user will be able to figure
> everything out, [such as] Unix -- ... arguably one of the most user-hostile
> systems in common use.

Um, you do know that Unix used to come with _user manuals_? Like, oh I dunno,
the _vast_ majority of software in the 1980s and early 1990s? The designers of
Unix and comparable systems were perfectly aware that command-line
incantations cannot be figured out simply by sitting at the system and playing
with it; this is very much _not_ what it was designed for!

If discoverability by novice users is a priority, then that is an argument for
menu-driven, interactive interfaces and UIs - which could well be built on top
of something like UNIX. But documentation is always going to be important.

~~~
TuringTest
Unix manuals are reference manuals, not training manuals. To learn something
from them, first you already need to have a very good idea of what you're
looking for.

The kind of documentation that Unix comes with is of little use to people who
already have some specific training in computing disciplines.

~~~
forgottenpass
I believe the parent poster is talking about the paperback books that used to
come with your operating system. Not manpages.

I learned the command line from a book that came in a Redhat boxed set.

------
paulgerhardt
There’s a fashion maxim that you should look at designer magazines from 15
years ago. 15 years is about half a fashion cycle so you see the goods in
their least flattering light.

Today that would roughly correspond to looking at Windows Mobile CE interfaces
or OSX Panther/Safari 1.0. Anything older and it starts coming back into
fashion.

The rise of windows 95 ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ a couple of years ago and now this seems to
confirm a trend. Certainly so, if you thrown in some art projects like Windows
‘93, recent fashion and music trends around vaporwave and reinterest in
PC-9800 emulation.

Love it.

~~~
anthk
>There’s a fashion maxim that you should look at designer magazines from 15
years ago.

Everyone is copying the typefaces and color schemes from the magazines which
came in the 70's.

>The rise of windows 95 ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ

Most of the kids with the ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ meme didn't even use Windows 98 or be even
aware of computers. I remember w9x not as a fashion trend, but as a shitty os
with a nightmare to manage in order to not crashing while intalling a driver.
Installing games took ages, and viruses were a real thing.

Also, everything was shareware. Libre software and Linux/BSD were not known
outside academics except at very late 90's.

If they knew and be alive into that, they woudn't be so fake nostalgical.

~~~
int_19h
I was alive into all this, and I find it very nostalgic.

------
tempodox
Seeing only the icons is barely half the truth. There should also be a
rendering of the noise those boxes made during operation. With every movement
of the mouse and each key press the hard disk made a sound as if it were being
eaten by the cookie monster. And of course the disk access indicator flashed
like mad all the time. Contemporary hardware seldom reaches that level of
entertainment.

~~~
combatentropy
I remember that noise. I blame Microsoft more than the hardware. From 1984 to
about 1994, Macintoshes were my main computer, and they didn't make noise just
for moving the mouse or opening a menu. Later, I ran Ubuntu on a computer that
used to run Windows XP. The noise and latency that Windows had, just for
opening a menu or folder, were replaced by silence and instant action. (Just
to be clear, of course all three had to spin the hard drive when I did
something major, like opening a file or program. But Windows is the only one
where all interactions were erratic.)

~~~
zozbot123
And in fact, you _still_ get that noise and activity light on Windows 10 and a
spinning-rust HD! On a system that wouldn't even manage to _use_ the RAM
completely while running on a sensible Linux install, let alone filling RAM up
or swapping to disk.

I mean, swapping used to be a fact of life in the late 1990s and early 2000s,
even on Linux - RAM was just too cramped back then. But then we got machines
with lots and lots of RAM even at the low end, and Linux became snappy and
quiet-- while Windows is still as bad as ever.

~~~
deathanatos
This — _constant_ swapping — is what drove me to Linux. Though, the laptop I
am typing this on is still using 16/32 GiB of RAM, mostly due to the "modern"
web. (But that's not any operating system's fault.)

RAM is, I feel, one of the more precious commodities on a machine, still. I
have spinning rust in my machines (more space/$), and I've not regretted it,
or really had a need for the speed an SSD could bring. (If anything, I think
I'd do a hybrid install, with a small SSD and a large HDD.) But I've never
once regretted upgrading RAM on a machine, and I definitely miss it on my work
MBP.

------
atombender
While I don't agree with the article's notion about icons, I think it's true
that 1990s UIs, especially Windows and Mac, were particularly productive OSes
because they applied not just common UI idioms but standard interactions:
Buttons, menus, windows, drag and drop -- everything was largely consistent
between each app.

With the web, we had a lot of consistency for a while simply because browsers
didn't allow much customization. Initially, all links were underlined, and
form buttons had to look exactly like the browser presented them. But then CSS
happened and all bets were off. Underlining is largely gone as a UI idiom.
It's no longer evident if something is a link or button, whether you can right
click and do "open in new tab" (often not possible if the link is not a URL
but a JavaScript function), and so on. A "native" app like Slack is all over
the place in terms of UI consistency, compared the strictness of the old IBM
CUA standard and others. One may be productive within a single app, but not
all of the idioms translate to other apps.

I think we're in a transitional phase where we're halfway between old-style
GUIs and something more fluid that approximates real life to a greater degree.
Consider the "UI" of a kitchen appliance or the packaging of a new iPhone, or
a TV remote control, or just a plain old door. Everyday objects vary wildly in
what "idiom" is provided to the user. Some doors have a handle, some have a
knob, some have a bar you push. We have the same kind of annoying lack of
standards and consistency in the real world, though it's usually evident that
you can turn a know and push down on a handle.

One can imagine a future where UIs are gesture-based, for example. Think of
the 3D UI from Spielberg's Minority Report. Some of these UIs may _need_ to
offer completely new way of interacting with objects (grab and make a fist to
copy, open your hand wide to paste, or something) that will be difficult to
standardize, much like the real world.

~~~
dsego
FYI, these idioms you talk about are called "signifiers", which are signs
indicating what you can do.

~~~
codetrotter
There’s a book that talks about these things called The Design of Everyday
Things. I’ve only read parts of it myself but a friend of mine read the whole
book and said it was good. From the parts I’ve read I agree. The author has
some given some talks and presentations relating to UX as well that can be
found on YouTube.

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/840.The_Design_of_Everyd...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/840.The_Design_of_Everyday_Things)

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Don+Norman](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Don+Norman)

------
Gikoskos
I love the early Windows design, especially the Windows 2000 look. Other than
the well designed icons, I find it to be much more intuitive and consistent
than modern Windows GUIs and Metro. Part of the reason why I use the classic
style on my Windows 7 machine (the other part is better performance). I like
it so much I implemented it in ReactJS [https://github.com/Gikoskos/react-
win32dialog/](https://github.com/Gikoskos/react-win32dialog/)

Moreover, if you guys haven't read it yet you should definitely check out
Raymond Chen's Old New Thing, which talks about the reasoning behind some of
the design choices that went down in earlier Windows desktops.

~~~
andai
I can relate. What are your plans for when W7 support is ended?

~~~
Gikoskos
No plans yet but I guess I'd have to adapt. Do you know of any ways to get
that look on 8.1 or 10 natively? At least without having to install a third-
party theming app.

~~~
andai
I think this is the best you can do [https://www.howtogeek.com/133405/how-to-
get-classic-style-th...](https://www.howtogeek.com/133405/how-to-get-classic-
style-themes-back-on-windows-8/)

------
raphlinus
You might want to consider adding "image-rendering: pixelated" to your CSS; on
a high-dpi monitor, these render with bilinear interpolation, which I think
doesn't do justice to the crispness of these icons.

~~~
zozbot123
Agreed, though with this sort of pixel art you really want either Lanczos, or
some palette-based scaling like hq#x. That way you will preserve the "crisp",
high-frequency content in the original image as much as possible while not
introducing artifacts like a "blocky" appearance (instead, the result is
smooth but crisp, like a watercolor painting).

(In fact, I wish modern desktop environments did this automatically on HiDPI
screens while keeping the original pixel art as their source-- especially for
its improved usability on lower-res displays, which are still widely used,
both on desktop and mobile. Instead we tend to get SVG, which while extremely
crisp on high-res displays is a mess for the original 16x16 or 32x32 use
case.)

~~~
tomc1985
What is the problem with 'blocky' appearance? All of those filters produce
icons in their own aesthetic. If the point is to preserve their pixellation
when why bother with filters?

~~~
zozbot123
> If the point is to preserve their pixellation

The "point" of pixel art-- what makes it so convenient for graphicians, even
amateur ones-- is not the blocky appearance (what you call "pixelated" \- but
in fact these icons did _not_ appear "blocky" on the CRT screens that were in
common use at the time!), but to set a _uniform_ constraint on fine detail
(and sometimes color depth) within the image, and then to maximize quality
while staying _within_ that constraint. It is perfectly consistent to want a
means of rendering these images that preserves whatever level of detail was in
the original while not introducing blocky artifacts.

~~~
tomc1985
The "not blocky CRT" argument doesn't really apply to personal computer CRT
monitors, as even when they maxed out at 640x480 or 800x600 the display was
still pretty crisp.

I can kind of see this argument if you're talking about playing nintendo on
mom's old dog-eared TV with the UHF adapter... but frankly I prefer to see
pixel art in its original unmolested, pixellated form

edit- on that note I remember very clearly that 320x240 games had a blocky
appearance in the 640x480 era. That was one of the biggest reasons to get a 3D
card!

~~~
ido
I remember playing Master of Orion 2 on my computer at the time (mid 90s) and
thinking:

1\. it's amazing this game actually runs at 640x480

2\. there's no point in having resolutions any higher than that, as you can't
see the individual pixels at that size anyway (I had a 14" CRT, viewable area
probably around 13").

At least in the early to mid 90s you definitely still had "CRT fuzz" on
computer monitors.

~~~
zozbot123
I _think_ the typical CRT fuzz is actually quite close to the optimum
smoothing that could be achieved with a simple, analog system, such as was
common in the 1980s and early 1990s - in that it should closely approximate a
Gaussian blur! But lanczos (or hq#x) is crisper than that, of course.

(And yes, 320x240 did use 2x nearest neighbor interpolation _on later video
cards /monitors_ that could only display higher resolutions natively. But I
assume that back in the early 1980s, you would actually get a "native" 320x240
screen, just like on a home computer or console.)

~~~
int_19h
On any CRT screen, you'd just get 320x240 as native resolution, the
"interpolation" basically done by the phosphorus of the screen. This was the
norm well into 90s, and not everybody was on an LCD monitor in 00s, either.

I remember that many games (myself included) resisted LCDs for a long time
even beyond that, precisely because they could only do one resolution well. If
you played old games, this wasn't satisfactory because those were often
hardcoded in the resolutions they support - typically 320x200 or 640x480. And
if you played new games, you'd often have to dial the resolution down to get
it running reasonably fast.

~~~
ido
I think the point was that it was the _video card_ that didn't support 320x240
natively, so it NNed to 640x480.

~~~
int_19h
Any VGA card (which you needed to get 640x480) would also support 320x240.

------
untog
By the criteria outlined in the article I would have thought the Windows 95
icons would be the ideal - they're essentially the same but without the
"flashy" gradients and other depth indications.

Side note: gave me some joy to read the comments and find that the ZIP file
with the icons in was infected with a virus. Now _that 's_ the kind of retro I
can associate with Windows 98.

~~~
drivers99
Later in the thread they determined the virus detection was a false positive.

------
amiga-workbench
Windows 2000 was just about the peak of desktop interfaces from a usability
and efficiency standpoint, its really only missing out on window snapping and
workspaces (which is kinda a crutch for bad window management like on OSX)

------
alsadi
I miss redhat's bluecurve icons.
[https://www.deviantart.com/redrope/art/Bluecurve-Complete-
Ic...](https://www.deviantart.com/redrope/art/Bluecurve-Complete-
Icons-1831078)

~~~
jackfraser
Yeah, these are excellent. Very BeOS feeling.

~~~
AckSyn
Oh man, I miss BeOS. It was one of the two OS's I'd bought back in the day.
The other was OpenBSD 3 iirc I have the CD around here somewhere, too.

~~~
rbanffy
I loved the BeOS icons. Spent a lot of time forcing Windows NT 4 to look like
it.

------
gumby
From the article:

> Rather than some designer’s flashy vision of the future, Windows 98 icons
> made the operating system feel like a place to get real work done. They had
> hard edges, soft colors and easy-to-recognize symbols.

The change is deliberate and reflects a social shift. In the W98 days
computers were primarily seen as work devices, and in particular Windows
wanted to distinguish itself from the more playful feeling Mac (which itself
chose a more playful feel to address the fear most people felt about their
computers. Apple tried to repeat the Mac playful feeling with the iMac and
early OS X feel, and while it helped a bit in the consumer market it
reinforced that feeling that they weren't for actual work.

And though it feels like it, this relationship hasn't changed! The (often
forced) playful feeling of modern UIs comes from the phone and the phone was
able to succeed there -- even need it -- because 1> people were already
comfortable with a non-professional connection to the web, mail, messaging et
al and 2> it was a "phone", not a "computer". This didn't worry Nokia or
Microsoft at first because they had "professional" devices, and probably we
forget the days of carrying a work and personal phone for phone calling. But
then since the work phones were so crappy they were able to capture the
mindshare.

I think it's gone the wrong way: because phones are worth so much, much less
effort goes into designing "work" apps, and the designers all start mobile ->
web -> desktop.

------
godot
I think nostalgia plays a part for sure, but there's also substance about the
old UIs.

Looking at Win98 icons reminds me of my days in high school when I would just
tinker around Windows for fun, changing icons of shortcuts, make good ol'
personal homepages in HTML and Javascript (mostly alert boxes), and play
Starcraft 1 and Diablo 2. The icons and the Win98 UI give me pleasant
feelings, mostly coming from those experiences.

On the substance side -- this isn't exactly about Windows, but in the last
couple of years I've tried a variety of Linux distros and DEs. Specifically,
I've tried CentOS 7 KDE, Antergos Gnome 3, and Manjaro 18 KDE, all on laptops.
There's no doubt that both Antergos and Manjaro bring with them very modern
DEs (regardless of Gnome or KDE). But for some reasons, I felt the most
productive on the CentOS 7 KDE, even though it looks the most primitive.
Before I had the Manjaro laptop, I thought it was a KDE vs Gnome difference
(KDE being more similar to Windows, vs Gnome being more similar to macOS, and
I generally prefer Windows), but I think it actually does come down to the UI
design. CentOS 7's KDE looks very dated, but everything is very functional and
took little customization to feel productive in. The difference is similar to
Win98/2000 vs Win7/8/10.

------
linux2647
I also think the aesthetic of classic Mac OS, like versions 8 and 9, as well
as BeOS had great design that made it easy to know what widgets were what and
how to interact with them.

~~~
duskwuff
Yes! The "Platinum" aesthetic in classic Mac OS was great. Simple aesthetic,
easy to follow for custom UI elements.

Not all of the interface shown in these screenshots uses Platinum -- in
particular, Quicktime Player did its own thing, and a handful of control
panels used an older look-and-feel based on Mac OS 7 -- but it should be
pretty apparent what the standard was.

[https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macos90](https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macos90)

------
altmind
I was so disappointed with Visual Studio 2018 when somebody decided to remove
all the colors from the icons. This made users guess the icon only by its
outline. The icon color design of windows 98, 2000 and xp were great, i miss
it so much.

~~~
gxx
I was in a senior position at Microsoft back at the time early versions of
Office, Windows 95 and 98 were being developed. In fact a number of groups
including the Visual Interface Design group reported to me. That's the group
that designed the general visual appearance and also icons in the UI for both
Office and Windows. (They were not designing the actual user interaction, just
the visual appearance.)

At that time the visual designers were strongly urging that all icons be
greyscale because they said color was "distracting". I overruled them and
insisted the icons have color because it was better for overall usability.

Now the whole industry seems to have come under the influence of the visual
designers favoring visual appearance over usability. Much less attention seems
to being given to real overall usability.

~~~
Pxtl
What's most infuriating about Office icons is how they change complete look
and feel of the launcher icons for the various programs so often, even the
color scheme...

And then they ripped the text labels out of the Windows taskbar, as if we are
supposed to remember what the icon for Word and Outlook looks like today.

~~~
mjevans
Yes, even the darn color scheme. What color was outlook? Look for the yellow
icon, no the blue, wait not Word... you can't even see the embossed O?

I honestly don't know how the most loathed form of support, phone support, can
even do it these days.

------
jenscow
Amazingly, moricons.dll is still included with Windows 10. This contains icons
from Windows 3.0.

(it should be called "moreicons.dll", but this was from when filenames had to
be 8 + 3 characters long)

~~~
jackfraser
I felt so cool in Grade 5 when I found that file. I had discovered that EXEs
could contain icons, and then found some 3rd party program that loaded one
from a DLL, so I went opening random DLLs until I saw that filename. What a
rush! Where were all those programs? I found out many, but some were still a
mystery.

This was part of whatever that Win3.1 thing was that would scan your disk for
programs it recognized and add them to Program Manager, right?

------
vermaden
Windows ME/2000 icons were even better.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/sl/8/8e/Win2000.png](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/sl/8/8e/Win2000.png)

------
samfisher83
I think windows 95/98 interface was great. I don't want ads when I click on
the start button. All they needed was to add a search bar and call it a day
instead all these ads or apps you don't want.

------
alexfringes
In analyses like these, one thing often gets lost: interfaces are a product of
their specific time, not just of a linear evolutionary process confined to the
type of product being discussed. No product exists in a timeless state, yet
retrospectives such as this one attempt to judge products as though they are
this thing that’s frozen outside of the space-time-culture continuum.

So, for these “productive interfaces” let’s keep in mind the goal Microsoft
had at the time, which was to get people and businesses to buy Windows
machines in bulk for serious, office-centric work. The abilities of the new,
less complicated graphical UI had to be rendered in a way that made it feel
just as serious as the more complicated text-based interfaces ... or paper
binders, even.

Moving forward to things like OS X or iOS, the goals of the encompassing
products clearly are different. In these cases the interfaces are attempting
to permeate the non-work lives of people otherwise not forced to “work” with
computers, in ways they would enjoy using outside of a work context. The goal
was to NOT feel like work.

Why is this contextual distinction important? Let’s assume people come to HN
to learn. I certainly do. It’s a great place to learn about technology,
science, and about building products and companies. From that perspective,
it’s worthwhile that we develop some rigor in how we reason about designs and
the way they were packaged into a sellable entity. When we judge products
historically, statements of an absolute qualitative nature like this one are
just fine ... but they are often the equivalent of latching on to one article
about a single mouse study, never looking at previous work, not checking the
references, ignoring available meta-analyses and so on. All the stuff that is
rightfully frowned upon when it comes to scientific research. Clearly product
quality is tremendously more subjective than science, but throwing all
objective perspectives out of the window is a trend that won’t guide our
discussions to the kinds of product insights the HN audience would benefit
from the most.

------
orliesaurus
Funny how the icon of a floppy disk which was used to represent saving is
slowly being phased out because the new generations have never even handled a
floppy, so they don't remember how crucial it was to put files on floppy
before storing them somewhere safe (or handing them over to a
colleague/friend). I even had a floppy organizer in my desk drawer with fresh
labels and sharpies, and peeling off old labels was actually satisfying back
then.

~~~
johannes1234321
Well, the complete concept of "saving" becomes less and less relevant. With
apps and websites there often is no explicit need to save. Just edit the
document and all changes are immediately synced up to persistent (cloud)
storage.

~~~
zokier
Not just explicit saving, but the whole concept of documents and especially
files is disappearing under our noses. Somewhat disconcertingly nobody seems
particularly worried that our whole model of computing is shifting away from
file-oriented systems. Remember that DOS stands for Disk Operating System,
managing files was arguably one of the main functions of it. Now days our data
is locked up inside "services" and "apps", not in user-accessible files.

~~~
johannes1234321
And a key feature of Windows 95 was the explorer with your home directory
where you could doubleclick on files and the appropriate application would
open, so users won't have to think about the application, but the file first.

However abstracting away from a pure file based view also has benefits, like
history or having different views on the document (i.e. to share a read only
version)

The main question is: How well will those things serve as lock-in in future,
GDPR does a first step there by enforcing that there is a way to extract the
data (not that the export format neccisarily is is really usable ...)

~~~
int_19h
Windows was document-centric in other respects, too. For example, the standard
UX guidelines defined three types of apps: dialog, single-document interface,
and multi-document interface. Most apps were actually expected to be of the
last two varieties, and the guidelines covered a lot of points on how it was
all supposed to look. And when it came to implementation, frameworks like MFC
were designed around that concept as well, with the ability to automatically
handle things like multiple views into the same document.

------
thothamon
No accounting for taste, but to me those icons are rather unsightly. From a
utilitarian point of view, they might be good, but for art (at the time) I
would have looked at NeXT icons.

------
kevindong
I hate the frequently excessive usage of icons in modern UIs. In icon-heavy
UIs, the meaning/functionality of an icon isn't very clear and labels only
show up when you hover a mouse over the icon (you're usually out of luck if
you're on mobile).

------
_emacsomancer_
I prefer the Windows 95 icons, e.g.
[http://windows95tips.com/post/35587792563](http://windows95tips.com/post/35587792563)

~~~
spronkey
Oh Windows 95... the last MS OS to feel completely uniform in aesthetic
design.

And that teal... gets me every time. I used to think it was hideously ugly,
but these days there's an understated elegance to it that just can't be
denied.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
[My comment was really a thinly-veiled excuse to link to windows95tips.com. I
don't actually have any aesthetic preferences between the icons/design of
different versions of Windows.]

------
thiht
Wow, this entire thread is so weird to read! I find these icons really bad
compared to what exists on Windows 10 for example, and yet everyone seems to
agree that 98's icons are better! I mean, seeing the icons in the
illustration, I have no idea what 3 out of the 6 do. In the image at the
bottom of the article it's even worse

I'm pretty sure it's just nostalgia, I have no idea why everyone here seems to
think they're objectively better

~~~
bromuro
I don’t miss at all those playful icons while using one of the worst windows
ever. I hated that mix of Tahoma and MSSansSerif too.

------
_pmf_
BeOS is peak UI design for me. I'm actually working with Haiku OS sometimes to
feel this vibe.

~~~
ajmarsh
I 100% agree. The BeOS icon set remains my personal favorite to this day. When
I run Linux I usually load them up first thing.

[https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/beos](https://www.iconfinder.com/iconsets/beos)

------
kstenerud
I miss Windows 2000.

3.11 and earlier were utter garbage. I was on an Amiga, and so thankfully
avoided those steaming piles.

95, 98, and ME were brutal operating systems, crashing all the time,
corrupting data, and generally making life hell. There was an NT 3.51 mod that
would give it the win95 interface, but there were too many software
compatibility issues. Amiga was dead, so I switched to Red Hat.

Then came Windows 2000. A nice, clean interface. Speedy operating system. Real
memory protection. Most things were in sane places. It got out of your way and
let you get real work done.

When XP came out, I didn't really see the point. It had graphics that looked
like a candy bar and slowed things down enormously. Thankfully, you could
disable it. I'm still not sure what they actually improved in that operating
system to make actual, real work easier to perform, but whatever they did, it
took twice the memory to do it, and required a beefier processor.

Then came Vista, which was unbearably slow. I upgraded to XP during this time
because my software wouldn't run on 2000 anymore.

Windows 7: A New Hope. It was still slow, but it turned out to be not an
unbearable upgrade, although I still stuck to XP for as long as I could.

Windows 8: Bigger. Slower. Unfathomable. I stuck to 7 through gritted teeth.

Now we're at Windows 10. Schizoid is the best word I can use to describe it.
Horrible UI half in the Vista world, half in the mobile world, Duplication
everywhere, no clear path for getting things done, constant updates at
inconvenient times (you can't seem to get even a month of uptime with this
OS).

I've since switched to Ubuntu, and run my Windows software in Wine.

~~~
chaoticmass
I remember Windows 2000 feeling like the height of Windows UI. Changed the
gray color theme to a oh so slightly brownish gray which just seemed classy.
That oh so subtle drop shadow on your mouse and other UI elements. Retaining
all of the psuedo-3D box rendering for windows, buttons, borders, etc. Helpful
and consistent signifiers revealing UI functionality at a glance.

Then the new-wave of UI designers decided all of this was 'ugly' and needed to
be cleaned up. Maybe the new stuff is 'prettier' (subjective) but we clearly
took many steps backward with regard to usability.

When Win 3.1 and especially 95 were developed, a lot of focus and testing was
done on usability because it was expected that a lot of people wouldn't know
how to use a GUI. Concepts of 'this is a button, you move the mouse pointer
over it and you can click it' would be novel to a lot of users. All the
signifiers had to be on point and consistent.

All of that has gone out the window. I blame 1) Mac OS X, because it was
pretty it made classic Windows UI look ancient and obsolete and 2) smart
phones with UIs so opaque that apps often include little tutorials showing you
how to use the UI, basically giving up on trying to be intuitive.

------
golem14
I found the original Mac, or the DR GEM icons (e.g. on Atari ST) even more
utilitarian (could one call them 'brutalist' ?) and may I say 'pleasant'.

In that vein, sometimes I wish for a desktop that is grayscale except for
exceptional highlights (e.g., photos, warnings, ...). I remember that it was a
real pleasure to use the Atari SM124 B&W CRT monitor.

------
black-tea
Most of these were from Windows 95. They got some slight cosmetic improvements
in 98 and then again for 2000 if I remember correctly.

~~~
bluedino
The big change was in Windows 9x the icons were 16-color, unless you had a
16-bit color display (even 256 color graphics cards used 16 color icons
because of palette swapping between applications).

[https://imgur.com/GpS5Dln](https://imgur.com/GpS5Dln)

------
kup0
Interesting to see how much current design has affected my gut reaction. At
first my mind immediately went to "there's no way this is the case..."

But looking at Win98 icons and UI... I really do miss that interface. Contrast
and buttons actually being buttons... etc

I think (despite my use of Win10 and MacOS for various reasons) that's why I
have a love of Linux UIs... many of them hearken back to those days.

The Linux DEs I tend to gravitate to are the ones that are most like classic
Windows UI

------
soheil
There has been a shift towards UI that gets out of the way and becomes second
nature to us. Admittedly that dream hasn't yet fully been realized, but we are
on that path. Removing clutter, HDD led light, noiseless computers all imo try
to integrate computers ever more fully into our lives and make it as seamless
as an integration as possible. One day we may have UI that feels so natural
that we might just think of a computer as one of our organs.

------
ggm
The designers were a very well coordinated integrated group (if there was more
than one of them) and they took design imperatives of a restricted palette and
fixed pixel sizes to heart.

If you asked the same group to design this now in a world of high dpi high
gamut screens they might not get the same constraints out in their design
brief.

Google's work on flat responsive was in some ways running against the tide.
Skuomorphic was hardly ancient when the Google reaction happened

------
tengbretson
The fact that the article has nearly no content besides "these are cool" and
the comments on it say the download has a virus in it makes me very dubious.

------
jammygit
The icons are nice, but I've never known what 90% of them were supposed to
represent. Still can only guess at many of them.

I do like the depth though

------
chris_wot
The Windows 98 interface was actually not bad. There only issue I had was that
to stop the computer you click on Start. :-)

------
azhenley
I'm sure we will go full circle back to that style soon enough, but with
higher resolution and expanded color palette.

~~~
tobr
I think the small palette is a big part of the charm. It’s limited enough to
give the whole set a coherent look, but large enough to illustrate any kind of
object.

------
peterburkimsher
I collected 131,788 icons from that era as 32x32 PNG files, and made a simple
search program for them. Does anyone have good ideas for using this dataset?

[https://iconpush.github.io](https://iconpush.github.io)

------
bepvte
I tried very hard using bash scripting and some recursive archive extraction
stuff to get all the icons out... but I couldnt get all the names, and I got a
lot of false positives. Id be interested to know how the author did this.

------
the-great-assyr
No they are not. Simply no! Wanna some really good and useful icons? Go get
them at KDE. Those... Things sucks. Big. Time. Is that some hipster phoney
nostalgia article of some sort? Please...

------
anthk
Ok, follow your tip. Look those nice w9x icons? do the same with your fonts.

[https://contrastrebellion.com/](https://contrastrebellion.com/)

------
simplecomplex
Who was the designer? What’s the license/copyright situation?

~~~
ChrisSD
That's what I came here to ask. I'd be pleasantly surprised if MS decide to
allow redistribution.

------
michaelaiello
Classic Shell helps bring us back to this design.
[http://www.classicshell.net/](http://www.classicshell.net/)

------
thanatropism
I wish there was a comparison with Windows 95 icons.

------
faissaloo
I wish we could get a modern spin on this style

------
canthonytucci
great from the same site, possibly nsfw [https://alexmeub.com/projects/celery-
man/](https://alexmeub.com/projects/celery-man/)

------
anthk
They irony is that the icons are the opposite to the font colors. Please:

[https://contrastrebellion.com/](https://contrastrebellion.com/)

------
tambourine_man
Sorry, as a Mac user then and now, they still look as cheesy as they did back
then to me.

Not that Windows looks nice these days either.

------
talkyroom
Totally agree with you

------
yzb
You should've linked to the https version of the page so the dozens of icons
load faster (because of http2 multiplexing)

[https://win98icons.alexmeub.com/](https://win98icons.alexmeub.com/)

------
asaph
Meh. They look very dated to me.

~~~
satysin
Age does not stop something from being great.

The Matrix is 20 years old this year, it is dated, it is still awesome.

~~~
implements
The matrix is a simulation of the past (the late 90s) - which is a great film
idea because it means even the presence of deep CRT monitors doesn't date the
movie - unlike (say) in "Alien", where they do (imo).

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I don't know, the whole aesthetic of the _Alien_ universe is so coherent and
well thought out that they don't really stand out to me.

------
veridies
While they may have been good for the time, it’s pretty hard to distinguish a
lot of these while looking at my smartphone, especially when I’m not wearing
glasses.

~~~
timbit42
Back then people had 640x480 screens.

