
ClassicKit – A collection of UI components for iOS influenced by Windows 95 - prithvi24
https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit
======
2ion
Reverting to the classic Win9x/2000 style is what I do still immediately when
using a Windows computer.

As opposed to the horrible flat/white/modern design that govers Windows 10 and
the web, it makes using the UI _easier_ : Elements have clear boundaries; it
is immediately obvious what role an UI component has (link? label? button?
text field?); there is very little ambiguity; typography is simple and
inobstrusive.

The Luna and Aero styles were actually not much worse than the classic Windows
style but interesting and usable evolutions of it as they retained the
properties listed above.

I am not entirely sure whether this perception stems from the fact that the
classic style is objectively "better" suited for a GUI or from the fact that
the Windows UIs were so predominant in the PC market at the time and left a
lasting impression on people's understanding of what a GUI is/was. Perhaps it
goes both ways.

~~~
rorso
You can't set classic themes on Win 10 with latest updates. So annoying. The
few attempts out there for themes that used a cracked themer just aren't the
same and are standard Win 10 with colours/menu colours changed.

I'd love a FULL faithful Win 98 theme for current Win 10. I'm 100% aware it's
mostly my own personal nostalgia rather than it being "better", but it's
absolutely ridiculous that you can no longer fully theme Windows and they
actively block themeing from working properly now.

I'm pretty close to leaving Windows for good (having used it since the start,
faithfully through thick and thin) and switching to Mint or some such, just so
I can set stuff up how I want to. Windows 10 is the most dumbed down, ugly,
and confusing OS Microsoft has ever put out (recently overtaking Vista for me
for annoyances).

~~~
megaman22
1.) If you can get it, LTSB is your friend.

2.) Classic Shell is mandatory. How you could break the start menu search as
profiundly as Windows 10 does is baffling.

~~~
zeusk
2.) It isn't just Windows, Mac has done it too; Try this in spotlight:

'vsc' will show Visual Studio Code

'vsco' will show a web search of 'vscode extensions' and Visual Studio Code
nowhere to be seen

'xc' will show Xcode

'xco' will show Xcode Server Builder

~~~
eropple
Yeah, it gets weird. First thing I do on every new Mac is disable Spotlight
for everything except applications and system preferences, though, and that
helps a lot.

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jordansmithnz
Nice, there’s some great stuff here in something that originated as a fun/joke
project:

\- it might not look ‘pretty’, but heck, the Windows 95 UI sure is intuitive.
Buttons are very apparent, icons make sense, and what was never meant as a
touch UI translates across to one incredibly well.

\- at a glance, code looks clean and pretty readable. @IBDesignable support
too (if only Xcode wasn’t so sluggish compiling/rendering IBDesignables...).
Well done to the author for not only making a fun/cool project, but for doing
it well.

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speps
Mods please remove "Came Across", this isn't Reddit. The guideline is to use
the page title or the project name and a short explanation.

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userbinator
I like the fact that it's drawing the edges as vectors, just like how Windows
itself renders classic style:

[https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit/blob/master/Component...](https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit/blob/master/Components/CKButton.swift)

IMHO much better than the trend of making every single UI element a huge
bitmap image (in multiple resolutions), such that a simple app contains dozens
of images of buttons and the like which consume more space than an entire
Win95 installation...

~~~
derefr
I’m curious whether vector controls result in less or more GPU texture-memory
usage, once you take into account that you need to render them _as_ textures
in order to get the compositor to work efficiently on them.

Raster images, after all, are usually loaded into VRAM by a library that
converts them to some native packed texture format that are especially low-
memory to hold and low-time-cost to render. Do baker vectors end up in the
same format, or in the less efficient format used for expected-to-update pixel
buffers (i.e. the format used for the renderings of compositable layers)?

~~~
pcwalton
It's pretty much the same either way, because vector images are always
rasterized on CPU before being uploaded to GPU in popular OS stacks.

This may change with GPU rasterization of vectors (disclaimer: that's what I
work on). I don't know of any major OS vendor that's actually publicly
planning to ship this anytime soon though.

~~~
derefr
I mean, sure, they’re rasterized—but are they rasterized to the same native
texture format as bitmaps are? I know that for assets in games, the “read-
only” assets loaded from disk come with rasterization metadata (or are already
transcoded to the native texture format, depending on architecture) such that
you get more efficient VRAM consumption at the expense of loading time (this
being why games can take so long to load a scene when GPUs have even more
PCI-e lanes than NVMe memory does.)

Whereas I’d _expect_ that texture-elements rendered during a scene, which
might potentially stick around for only a few frames, would load to the GPU
“uncompressed”, loading faster (less driver delay despite the increased size)
but then taking more cycles of each texture-unit to process on each frame,
thus taxing the GPU more.

I definitely know this was true back in the 90s in game consoles—data streamed
from disk was optimized for the GPU; while compositing in data held as a raw
pixel field in VRAM (because it was e.g. a minimap texture you were redrawing
or somesuch) left much less GPU available for anything else to use.

~~~
pcwalton
I'm not aware of any mainstream UI toolkits that use texture compression for
anything. Those compression formats are lossy, and UIs usually want to be
pixel perfect.

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ksherlock
Story time... when NeXT pivoted away from hardware, they ported OpenStep to
Windows NT 4. Since they needed to look like Windows NT, they included MS
Windows UI images. Those images are gone now but were still present in OS X as
of Snow Leopard.

(And now the show is on the other foot with Microsoft/WinObjC)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/02/mac_images/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/02/mac_images/)

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jgtrosh
The IE copycat is really asking for an MSN/Yahoo toolbar.

~~~
Clubber
And some remote system script execution.

~~~
saagarjha
> some remote system script execution

That's how you get pulled from the App Store.

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zydeco
I did something similar as an easter egg, but with classic black and white Mac
UI, but I never thought to publish it as a library.

~~~
bangonkeyboard
Classic Note [0][1] ran with the classic Mac aesthetic and was very well done,
but is unfortunately no longer in the App Store.

[0]: [http://www.digitalworlds-ent.com/classicnote/](http://www.digitalworlds-
ent.com/classicnote/)

[1]: [https://appadvice.com/app/classic-
note/628565312](https://appadvice.com/app/classic-note/628565312)

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asbc
Is there an equivalent for Android? Asking for a friend...

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petilon
Keep in mind that the distinctive 3D look of Windows 95 UI was inspired by
NeXT. If you like how controls look in Windows 95 then what you really like is
NeXT.

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StavrosK
Oh man, this gives me fuzzy feelings. I remember developing my first
applications in VB 4 back in 97 or so, I had _so much fun_. I remember when IE
4 came along, with its flat icons and Active Desktop and things. My 100 MHz
Pentium couldn't even run it well, what with the 16 MB of RAM.

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mhd
That could be a good basis for a NeXt-alike, which is after all a direct
ancestor.

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zokier
> The assets and design metrics were (for the most part) taken from an actual
> installation of Windows 95

DMCA pulldown in 3.. 2..

If you are thinking of using this, consider the fact that any assets ripped
from Windows are copyright infringements.

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digi_owl
Windows PocketPC comes to mind...

~~~
heywire
Yeah, it reminds me of Windows CE for sure

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evo_9
Pretty cool, is there a 90's era Mac pre-OSX version somewhere? Would be
pretty rad (ha) to do a UI in both and allow the user to pick their
'platform'. Nifty stuff.

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panic
If you could get this working with the Win32 API and Wine, you'd have a true
cross-platform app solution!

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apazgo
But does it support iPhone X notch? :)

~~~
rimliu
You ar probably jesting, but the serious answer: there is no reason for it not
too. The notch itself has nothing to do with UI elements, just with their
positioning. As long as you respect safe area guidelines in view you are good.

~~~
leviathan
Only in theory.

Even if you do respect the layout margins and safe area, there design needs to
accommodate the change, so where the status bar was only 20 pixels, there's
now a lot more space to deal with and the design needs to adjust.

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gwbas1c
Back when I had Windows 95 I was obsessed with text mode.

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gjmacd
why...

