
Welcome to my GUI gallery - antonios
http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
======
dimitar
I've spent too much time on that website I think I've developed an
appreciation of GUIs before the mid-nineties:

Buttons for everything, no hidden corners and such, no excessive
skeuomorphism, respect of preferences in colors and fonts, low feature creep,
no excessive social media integration and network services 'integration' (AOL,
MSN).

What happened since? The open-source world hasn't offered anything of that
caliber, so I guess there was a shift in thinking at some point.

~~~
GuiA
On the open source side, feature creep and lack of design direction. On the
commercial side, the internet + desire to squeeze in as much
advertising/profits as possible.

It is definitely still possible to have a desktop that looks and behaves like
this on Linux, if you use a minimalistic window manager and apps (dwm, xmonad,
open box, the suckless apps, etc). I've been doing this for a while, it makes
the computing experience much nicer IMO.

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bane
This is one of those amazing free resources that makes the Internet amazing. I
wish Wikipedia's sections on each of these OS's had such comprehensive
screenshots and writeup.

also: I had forgotten how many Windows 3.x shells there were.

[http://toastytech.com/guis/indexshells.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/indexshells.html)

~~~
72deluxe
Haha yes I remember running Calmira II on a Windows 3.1 486 SX25 with very
little RAM (or was it a 386 monoscreen laptop?) in the desire to get the
functionality of Windows 95. How little I knew!

Happy days.

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thenerdfiles
QuantumLink == Flat Design

[http://toastytech.com/guis/c64gquantumlink.gif](http://toastytech.com/guis/c64gquantumlink.gif)

Look at that typesetting! (So cool.)

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sjwright
The Xerox Alto had a start button back twenty years before Windows 95!

[http://toastytech.com/guis/altoboot1.gif](http://toastytech.com/guis/altoboot1.gif)

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wyuenho
Does anyone know why pretty much all of the PARC's successors choose to orient
their monitors in "landscape" mode as opposed to "portrait" as was done on the
PARC? Reading and working is so much easier in portrait mode. You get to see a
lot more without having to scroll all the time.

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ryanjshaw
I recall spending silly amounts of time years ago trying to locate some of the
more exotic stuff on that site (particularly GlobalView & NewWave). Nice to
see that direct access to these important historical resources is much
improved since then.

Looks like CommonPoint is still the one that got away; oddly it's probably the
most interesting one
([http://root.cern.ch/TaligentDocs/TaligentOnline/DocumentRoot...](http://root.cern.ch/TaligentDocs/TaligentOnline/DocumentRoot/1.0/Docs/books/HI/HI_10.html#HEADING21)).

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pcurve
Looking at BeOS screenshots make me relive the disappointment I felt as a Mac
owner in the 90s when Apple decided not to use BeOS as its next generation OS.
It was quite a bit ahead of its time.

~~~
__float
NeXTSTEP was way ahead of its time too.

~~~
scoot
As was AmigaOS in its own way. Is it really accurate to call all these ahead
of their time, or rather that what was in common use at the time was behind
the times?

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BinaryBrainz
I laughed obnoxiously loud in the office when I saw the IE evil page with the
Bill Gates satin face.
[http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html](http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html)

Thanks for publishing this little gem. It's fun to look at most of the old
interfaces that I never saw (pre-Win'98).

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J_Darnley
Thanks for the link. I can't remember the last time I liked a "new" website
this much.

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k1kingy
I get the feeling they don't really like Windows 8.

~~~
moccajoghurt
Yeah but his criticism is objective and thoughtful. I have read about 5
different reviews he made and I can totally understand now why he dislikes
Windows 8.

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oneeyedpigeon
Those Xerox Alto screenshots are amazing; I cannot imagine how exciting it
must have been developing the seeds of the GUI way back in the mid 70s.
Something about that font makes it more pleasing than anything we have around
today.

~~~
agumonkey
look, whitespace flat
[http://toastytech.com/guis/altodraw.jpg](http://toastytech.com/guis/altodraw.jpg)

my favorite user interface is still STAR though
[http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/star.html).
B&W never looked better, the icons, their borders. Some screenshots look like
they came from Tufte
[http://toastytech.com/guis/starapp3.jpg](http://toastytech.com/guis/starapp3.jpg)

They had generic operations that were supported by many parts of the OS, like
a move command used for files or data inside an editor. Like Algol, successors
peaked below, they mostly provided superficial similarities.

edit: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fap-
mXY80ls](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fap-mXY80ls) intran information
system. Used to be hosted on google videos but the link in this page
[http://www.digibarn.com/collections/movies/digibarn-
tv/gui-m...](http://www.digibarn.com/collections/movies/digibarn-tv/gui-
movies/intran/index.html) is dead, so here's a new one.

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e12e
Oh, wow, this Amiga OS 1.x takes me back:

[http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1default.png](http://toastytech.com/guis/amiga1default.png)

I rember, even then, thinking -- well this might be ugly, but they sure got
the contrast right -- and everything is really visible/obvious. But I mean
seriously: orange on blue -- that takes some serious "usability trumps
looks"-focus...

[edit: And also, even back then, I thought; wow, these black/orange scrollbars
are really confusing - what signifies where I am, and how much I can "scroll
to"...]

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jakejake
Wow, I had a flashback to 1998!

Seriously, though, great collection of GUIs. It's cool to see some aspects of
those window managers that are still in our modern operating systems.

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taspeotis
Reminds me of the Interface Hall of Shame [1].

[1]
[http://interfacehallofshame.eu/www.iarchitect.com/lotus.htm](http://interfacehallofshame.eu/www.iarchitect.com/lotus.htm)

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gaze
Man. I really miss IRIX.

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henpa
Wow.. I was trying to remember the name of the software that came with a PC I
used to have in 1991... It's GeoWorks! What a nive flashback! :-)

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AndreasFrom
Wow, I used this website for my school-assignment on GUIs a couple of years
ago. It's funny to see it again.

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jameswyse
Good memories!

My first experience with a graphical OS was with GEM on an Amstrad 1640. My
Amstrad 1512 only had DOS :/

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Shinkei
Was the Atari ST GUI a derivative of AmigaOS? I don't see any images for it,
but it looks similar.

~~~
teddyh
No, they licensed the existing GEM graphical environment. You could also get
GEM for PC;I saw a DOS program shipped with an embedded GEM runtime.

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LukeWalsh
Sad to see no mention of clippy :(.

~~~
qbrass
They don't mention Clippy by name, but he gets a reference in the MS Bob
section.

[http://toastytech.com/guis/bob4.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/bob4.html)

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wrongc0ntinent
This is great, thanks, enjoyed the timeline.

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GhotiFish
hahaaaahaa

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLcPbsfF3qI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLcPbsfF3qI)

very cute.

