
What Was the Microsoft Network? - kayamon
http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/the-microsoft-network/
======
rayiner
God I miss this: [http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/the-microsoft-
network/msn1_...](http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/the-microsoft-
network/msn1_02.jpg#right#thumb).

So clear! So easy to read! So obvious what things you can click and what
things you can't. Compared to this Windows Modern crap where it's not clear
what's a button and what's a label, and every app (or part thereof) has its
own idea about where things go.

~~~
blauditore
Actually, it's not that consistent. Some clickable things have a 3D-shape,
some are just text (top menu), and some are a picture of a folder with some
text.

Frankly, I don't think modern UIs are much worse than old ones. Yes, you
_could_ add visual indicators to what is clickable and what is not
(3D-effect), but it's not like that was a universal rule back then either.

Perhaps it's just that people find most intuitive what they learned first and
don't like adopting new paradigms.

~~~
quietbritishjim
The menus are grey to indicate that they're button-like. In particular,
there's nothing you can do as a user to edit them. Admittedly they're not that
different from static labels, which would also be grey but not have the button
shadow.

The middle area is white and depressed because that's the content area. It's a
bit like a text document or text edit control: it's normal to be able to click
in it and select stuff and edit it. It's a bit unusual in that double clicking
opens a new window, but that's also true if you double click a linked embedded
image in a Word document.

Overall it's pretty consistent.

~~~
rayiner
Also, the menu is in the same place in every app and does more or less the
same thing. And it’s all text and visible at all times.

Think how far we’ve fallen. There was a time when as a result of human
interface research, Apple put the menu bar across the top of the screen
because it created an infinitely tall click target. Today, even in apps not
designed primarily for touch use (e.g. Slack), we’ve buried the menu behind a
randomly placed inscrutable hamburger icon.

~~~
pcwalton
> Today, even in apps not designed primarily for touch use (e.g. Slack), we’ve
> buried the menu behind a randomly placed inscrutable hamburger icon.

Windows 95 buried everything under the Start menu, which was hardly a paragon
of usability. There was a "Documents" menu that was pretty useless, a
"Programs" menu that required several small click targets to launch anything
(and regularly overflowed with applications), a "Run" button that popped up a
completely inscrutable dialog box, and a "Shut Down" button that made users
decide whether to restart normally or to restart in DOS mode.

I think you're giving the '90s too much of a pass. Modern mobile OS's in
particular are much more usable than anything back then.

~~~
rayiner
> I think you're giving the '90s too much of a pass. Modern mobile OS's in
> particular are much more usable than anything back then

I disagree. At least Win 95 was largely discoverable to people who can read.
Today’s mobile OSes are completely undiscoverable, with functionality hidden
behind inconsistant gestures and iconography.

E.g. Apple Maps. How do I get directions from point A to point B? No obvious
widget. Maybe search for point A. A, “directions.” But it looks like it is
directions from wherever Apple thinks I am to point A. Not what I wanted.
Maybe search for point B. Still directions from wherever Apple thinks I am.
Maybe click it anyway. Okay, now routes. But no obvious button or text field
to change the starting and ending point. Oh, I see, the “here” is blue. Maybe
I can click on it. It’s hot garbage. Would it kill you to have a menu across
the top with a comprehensive enumeration of functions your app supports?

And apps like Edge and Chrome are even worse for importing this lunacy into
the desktop, where the screen space limitations of mobile don’t apply.

~~~
pcwalton
Research has consistently shown that the traditional menu bar is actually not
very usable for most people. Office ran into this problem fairly quickly, even
back in 1997. The menu bars quickly became overwhelming.

This series of blog posts from a decade ago is intresting:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2008/03/13/table-
of...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2008/03/13/table-of-contents/)

~~~
kilper
I will try to read those posts soon. I've only just started using the new
Office (since I work for a Windows shop now, instead of Linux).

It's extremely frustrating for me - for instance, I always have to search and
scan for the "copy" button only to discover it's not on the current tab and
then move to another tab which - if I'm lucky - will not suddenly close my
document and replace it with a crazy menu but contain the tool I want to us.
And it's crazy - if you want to save or print your document, you have to use
the fake-tab that closes your document! (At the very least, they could just
shrink the window and put it on the side so you know where you are.)

At least the old system had my frequently used tools easily accessible, but my
rarely used tools hard to find. The current setup might have rarely used tools
easy to find and frequently used tools hard to find - it all depends on what I
was doing three hours and two tasks ago.

The menus buried so many features I never used or knew about. Its quite
reasonable for them to replace it with a new system. But hiding the tools I
use all the time annoys me me, and the silly fake-tab that hides my work when
I'm trying to keep it upsets me. I would really be excited to know their
logic. I hope it's explained in the blogs you linked to.

------
tptacek
I wanted to find something debunking the notion that userids at CompuServe
were based on the PDP-10s that ran the service, because it seemed improbable
that anyone was running a major online service on PDP-10s by the time the
Microsoft Chicago betas were circulating, but, nope: that's real.

[http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/compuserve.txt](http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/compuserve.txt)

~~~
forapurpose
Very interesting but the story in that post is dated 1988, long before Windows
95. I'm calling it a "post" because I'm not sure what it is: Email? Message?
File? The header:

    
    
      File name:  compus.txt
      Date:  31-Aug-88 15:44 EDT
      From:  Sandy Trevor [70000,130]
      Subj:  PDP-10 History
    
      TO: Joe Dempster

~~~
smellf
The date is repeated below, so that's not a typo. He then talks about how
Compuserve has been using PDP-10s for the previous 17 years. Compuserve was
around in 1971??

Edit: Holy shit, Compuserve was founded in 1969(!) as a subsidiary of an
insurance company.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe)

------
sandworm101
From a friend who once worked on it: whole thing ran on a single rack.
Redundant power supplies, but a single common plug.

~~~
djsumdog
I remember watching a video about Sierra OnLine's network (later The
Imagination Network which was sold to AT&T) where when they needed to expand,
they just added another computer full of modems.

------
djsumdog
> You see, back in 1994 Facebook hadn't yet invented the Internet

Made me laugh. We are in such a different era. If we look at our tools from
back then, we would find them savage, and our past self looking at us would
see tech that is indistinguishable from magic .. although predictable .. and
bloated .. and filled with ads. ... Not much has really changed has it?

~~~
setr
>If we look at our tools from back then, we would find them savage

I don’t know how true that is... you have tools today with the UX of then
(vim, web 1.0 websites) and they’re both functional, useful, and not really
that different from their modern equivalent. Software-wise, its hard to say
that much has changed.

The main difference is uaage between early web and modern is web-apps (not
significantly different from desktop apps) and the amount of sheer content to
be found. Perhaps the centralized usage of social media too, but their usage
is probably unsurprising (more surprising is _how much_ personal info people
feel fine giving away)

Hardware has become radicaly different, but somewhat in an expected way:
everything got more dense. The only major shift in thinking there might be
touchscreens, and google/gps available anytime anywhere, but neither are
particularly surprising.

After GUIs became a major thing, I would argue most of our UX went stagnant.
You could pull out a 1994 pc today and have no issue using it, and someone
from 1994 would likeky have little trouble with windows 10, or even an iphone
(after getting past the touchscreen).

Things got faster and smaller, but not different. Certainly not the difference
of something actually “savage” (like a stone tied to a stick) to something
truly “modern” (like a powerdrill), that would require a totally different
mindset to use

~~~
com2kid
> and someone from 1994 would likeky have little trouble with windows 10, or
> even an iphone (after getting past the touchscreen).

The touch screen is a huge thing, that is like saying "after getting past the
mouse" going from the 80s to the 90s.

Can you imagine trying to teach someone from 1994 about an iPhone? "So you
need to tap and hold on some UI elements. No there isn't an indication which
ones, you just sorta guess and get used to it. Yeah like right clicking,
except slower, and the menu options aren't consistent. Oh some other elements
you tap, but you tap HARD on. Some elements you tap and hold hard on, and here
is the manual for all the ways you can tap, double tap, tap and hold, and some
other gestures, for that one single button you have. If you get a newer
iPhone, the button is gone and instead there are just magic swipes you do from
off screen in different directions and distances to get different behaviors."

And then try explaining how the file system thing is all sorts of weird.

~~~
Jtsummers
Not 1994, but in 1997 we had the PalmPilot with a touch screen. Yes, with a
stylus, but it existed. The iPhone would be different, but not magic.

~~~
com2kid
PalmPilots were stupid simple to use though. IMHO they were about the height
of portable device usability, just enough external buttons that it was
possible to pull it out of your pocket and push the desired hotkey all with
one smooth motion.

I miss having my todo list on a PalmPilot. Talk about being super organized.
When it comes to being organized, today's cell phones are a joke in
comparison.

Samsung ALMOST got it correct with the s-pen on the note, but they unpin notes
from the lock screen after 10 minutes, and you have to do tap on the note a
few times to edit it, you can't just write on the lock screen note with the
s-pen.

As an aside, I am incredibly irritated at how Samsung went 90% of the way to
making an amazing productivity tool and then dropped the bloody ball. :/

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
IIRC, the creator of the Palm Pilot carried a block of wood around in his back
pocket, pulling it out and imagining going through steps with it to work out
the form factor and design of the applications.

Also, I knew someone who continued to use Palm's Windows software as her
primary calendar and organization software years after Palm had begun fading
away, and despite having never owned a Palm device! It was hard to fault her
for it, since it was fast and robust.

------
ericras
Microsoft Network was the first online service my family subscribed to in fall
1995. I recall our problem being that you had to dial in to different phone
numbers for the walled garden and for the web. And we only had local phone
numbers for the walled garden. So while the UI was pretty sweet, there wasn't
much there and I recall being angry that I couldn't use Internet Explorer and
access espnet.sportszone.com without dialing long distance. When we switched
to AOL in 96 they had far more stuff and it was easier to get on the web.

------
sundvor
Although in a bit of a haze by now, I have such fond memories of the MSN. In
my early twenties, I had gotten a beta CD of Win95 from dad who ran an IT
shop. I stumbled upon the MSN, which had an access point in Norway, and before
I knew it I was on the Frog Pond chatting away with really cool people -
probably quite a few from Microsoft. Can only remember one name of the group:
Pam!

Win95 was also a giant step up from 3.1 and this being a year or two before I
got on the Internet it was indeed very exciting stuff. I had left my Amiga a
couple of years before, and finally the PC was getting similar level good! I
somehow started receiving interim builds by FedEx as well, I must have been
providing some feedback that was useful to them.

Back then, at my age, that felt like a huge deal, like I was really part of an
insider group. :-)

------
peterwwillis
I've always liked the everything-is-an-object paradigm. This makes me realize
how close we are to a universal standard for them.

Imagine an executable zip file with a few default files that define things
like metadata, or actual data. Then imagine another zip file that can inherit
this first zip file as defaults, and override them. Imagine the second one can
be included in the first. Now imagine that changes to any of these files
creates a new zip with just the deltas. And finally, an API wraps the zip
files so that when you operate on the last one, it transparently maps the
previous changes, copy-on-write style.

I think this should be an operating system extension, but the great part is,
you can implement it all as libraries and ship it to any OS. You then have all
the features of zip (archive, compression, encryption, etc), the simplicity of
simple key-value data objects in JSON, a copy-on-write mechanism, and since
it's both an executable and an archive, it can provide all its own
dependencies.

This would effectively solve the need for Docker, and not impose the problems
of statically compiled single-platform binaries, because everything is in a
ZIP file, so you can provide all dependencies (including for multiple
platforms), version them, and write changes to new versioned objects. And
self-extracting ZIP files already exist.

Tie this to HTTP so you can pull objects from a remote store and you've mostly
solved application deployment.

~~~
pjc50
Sounds rather like an executable git archive - but the security properties
sound like a total nightmare.

I believe the Amiga had some sort of "unversal extension mechanism" too, but
it predates internet security being critical.

~~~
bitwize
The Amiga had datatypes, which allowed an application program to install a
reader and writer for its peculiar file format, OS wide. So say you had
Photoshop for the Amiga. Not sure if that was a thing, but bear with. It would
install a datatype for .psd files that would allow you to view such files in
your favorite image viewer, or even a web browser.

The only other OS to offer this feature was BeOS.

~~~
setpatchaddress
And classic Mac OS.

[http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc...](http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/documentation/mac/MoreToolbox/MoreToolbox-414.html#HEADING414-0)

------
pjc50
Ah, COM.

It's an extreme case of inventing a technology before the support
infrastructure is ready for it, like a car with no refining. In the case of
COM and OLE, building an inter-application object system without a viable
object oriented programming language to do it in. So developers had to build
machinery by hand in C in each COM hosting application.

~~~
mikestew
Before going to Microsoft, I had used COM and OLE via VB, FoxPro, and probably
a few other higher-level abstractions. Then I went to Microsoft and worked on
OLE DB, using C. O...M...G. _CreateObject()_ suddenly turned into (what seemed
like) a 1000 lines of almost-boilerplate. That ADO AddRecord() that was so
easy in classic VB? Ugh, if only you knew what was behind that. COM was a
clever idea to solve a hard problem, but if one had to work under the covers
it was some sausage you were definitely better off not knowing the ingredients
of. I mean, COM mostly worked and wasn't bad once you got the hang of it, just
like pig snout in your sausage isn't _bad_ for you. It's just kind of
unappealing at first.

~~~
pjmlp
They finally learned with UWP.

Microsoft WinDev always seemed a bit strange versus everyone else.

Borland had very nice high level frameworks (still do as Codegear but alas),
and then DevTools also had them as VB and later .NET.

But WinDev had always to make everything low level, and if it wasn't for them
we would have had AFX instead of MFC.

~~~
thought_alarm
Backward compatibility is easier if the OS APIs are as terse and featureless
as possible. Higher-level frameworks (VB, .NET, VCL, etc.) can then be
distributed independent of OS releases with multiple versions installed
simultaneously.

~~~
pjmlp
That is orthogonal to actually making OS APIs easier to deal with.

Even with plain C there are ways to have higher-level usable frameworks.

------
nbevans
The COM side rant is still relevant today. All of the UWP framework for
"modern Windows Store apps" is built on top of COM. It's like a time warp. The
JavaScript and .NET SDKs for UWP apps are just wrappers around what is really
a COM API. Often you are dealing with low level `COMException` exceptions (in
.NET land) for things that the .NET SDK hasn't got a contingency for.

------
nkg
For those who missed it: "Microsoft promotional video, where Chandler and
Rachel from Friends learn how to look at cat pictures on The Microsoft
Network"

[https://youtu.be/5DqJwmzG6Fk?t=1133](https://youtu.be/5DqJwmzG6Fk?t=1133)

XD

~~~
isostatic
"Look Matty, I'm computing!"

I've never seen this video so far in. Made me realise how terrible hierarchal
things are, especially with a mouse. Click, Click, Click, Click, Click, Click.

Give me "locate", or Mac's spotlight, any day of the week.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
Hierarchies are great if you get to manage them and stay on top of it. The
Windows Start Menu search is frustrating, since you're at the mercy of an
algorithm. The other day I hit the Windows key, typed the first few letters of
an application I regularly used, hit the enter key, and it launched the
"Uninstall _X_ " item. It just decided to sort that one higher on that day.
_Shrug_

------
TuringTest
_I hear in the next Windows build they 're actually going to replace Control
Panel with a copy of Eliza that's been hooked up to a magic 8-ball_

I thought Cortana was already up and running since Windows 10?

------
jimbobimbo
Good article, but the critique of the shell is misplaced. Shell provides a
universal and extensible way to browse anything that makes sense to browse as
a file system, without resorting to drivers. Yes, there's overhead that comes
with that, but it allows to plug new things into Explorer, without waiting for
Microsoft to do anything about it.

Also, FWIW, GetOpenFileName [1] turns the spaghetti from the article into just
few lines of code.

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/desktop/api/commdlg...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/desktop/api/commdlg/nf-commdlg-getopenfilenamew)

~~~
quietbritishjim
GetOpenFileName is mentioned in the article as being the deprecated API that
opens the old common dialog boxes. The first sentence in the documentation you
linked to says to use the new COM API instead.

~~~
userbinator
Yes, and upon clicking to the new COM API page, you are presented with the
11-deep nested if() "Basic Usage" monstrosity whose screenshot is also in the
article.

I bet a lot of programmers just said "lol no. 'deprecated' my arse." and
stayed with GetOpenFileName, as I did. MS isn't going to break countless apps
by removing it.

------
incompatible
I was actually quite paranoid in those days that Microsoft was trying to take
over computing in its entirety. We were looking at a future where every
computer would run Windows and only be able to connect to a network owned by
Microsoft. All the protocols and document formats would be proprietary.

But was it really paranoia if it's actually what Microsoft was trying to
achieve? I was quite surprised when they were defeated by the Internet, and
they had to scramble to buy a web browser. That lead to the "Best viewed with
Internet Explorer" days, but that's another story.

------
nailer
MSN and the internet are cool, but I think CDROM is going to triumph in a big
way, provided people can afford a DX2-66. I mean have you played Myst?

~~~
goatlover
LaserDisc is the future. Have you ever watched Jurassic Park on it?

~~~
WorldMaker
They have those LaserDisc games at the Arcade like Mad Dog McCree and Dragon's
Lair. I bet we'll all LaserDiscs connected to our computers one day.

------
ssimpson
all i remember about the microsoft network, is that it would kill my
compuserve setup by putting a new winsock.dll file in place. it was the only
file that windows 95 would detect as "corrupt" when i reinstalled the
compuserve one.

[https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/corpo...](https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/corporate-
monopolies/dangers_msn.html)

------
athenot
The conclusion of the article is spot-on. Our current large platforms are only
marginally better than the walled-gardens of online systems in the 1990's.

------
myrandomcomment
Okay I really enjoyed this. Well written and entertaining. I was at the time
on the other end of this, with OS/2 where everything really was an object you
could do stuff with. Need a printer, open templates and drag off a printer
one, fill in some info. I really liked the WPS in OS/2\. Some of the stuff you
cannot do even today. Moved on to Solaris and IRIX (I know, I was doing that
internet thing at an ISP) and then NeXTStep. Hey Apple I want the damn NeXT
shelf back!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_\(computing\))

------
djhworld
Very interesting article, didn't even know this existed.

My first "proper" computer that my parents bought was running Windows 98, so
will have missed this, but I remember using Windows 95 at school.

We also missed the whole walled garden thing (I'm from the UK, I think AOL
tried to break into the market here but not sure if it succeeded) and made our
first forays onto the internet using dialup via an ISP.

Interesting to see what a few years before my first time on the web was like.

The "everything is an object" thing sort of reminds me of Plan9 with a bit of
BeOS too.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I'm from the UK too: we had a Dell XPS Dimension back in 1996, it came with
the OSR-1 release which still had the original shell-based MSN client, so we
signed up for the free 30-day trial included in the box so we could get on the
Internet as well as to check-out the MSN stuff. I have memories of clicking
around the original Explorer-shell based Internet Gaming Zone (zone.com would
launch later) - then the free trial expired and we switched to CompuServ and
Netscape.

Only AOL was able to eke out a market in the UK - often the exclusive content
they had was too American-centric to be of interest to Europeans, though I
remember CompuServ was popular in academia. When we were in CompuServ we only
used it to get on the Internet - so after subscription-free ISPs like
FreeServe and LibertySurf were launched we instantly ditched CompuServe.

------
runciblespoon
“This is what makes the whole COM system really really stupid. It's like they
don't want you to be able to work with it. They want to make it hard for you
to access and share data, because code that were to do something wreckless
like call fopen is code that could run on anyone's operating system, not just
theirs.”

Well doh !

Bill Gates 1987: “OS/2 is the platform for the nineties”

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmiwiUeEn4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmiwiUeEn4k)

------
alternize
I had the chance to be part of a beta tester group for The Microsoft Network
in my country for roughly two years. while the network's content itself wasn't
that attractive, it could also be used to access other internet services,
similar as AOL provided.

beta testers were provided access through a toll-free number. exciting times
for teenage me, after years of fights due to BBS-inflated monthly family phone
bills.

------
hfdgiutdryg
Interesting piece up until the COM rant tangent. COM was brilliant. It was
complex because what it did was complex. It provided a binary contact for
unrelated software packages to communicate. It was an absolute breeze to work
with in VB, something I didn't appreciate in my C++ snob days.

The problem with COM wasn't COM, it was the dominant 'serious' programming
language of the day.

------
gct
MFW people don't realize where MSNBC came from

------
RyJones
Actual title: "What The Hell Was The Microsoft Network?"

[https://twitter.com/grumpygiant/status/1034847962797494272](https://twitter.com/grumpygiant/status/1034847962797494272)

~~~
bubblethink
Hackers can't deal with words like Hell. Should have been Heck. In a couple of
decades, on a wholly new interconnected network, we'll see an article titled,
"What the Hell Was a Hacker?"

~~~
city41
I think it’s less about being a “bad” word and more about not injecting a bit
of bias in before the reader even gets to the article. HN is big on “sterile”
titles. I believe this falls under “gratuitous adjectives” in the guidelines.

------
chungy
> It was a kind of version of the Web where you could browse online data the
> same way you browsed your file system. This is what made it cool.

That sounds like Gopher.

~~~
gaius
In those days you could mount \\\ftp.microsoft.com as m: and browse it as a
file share, unencrypted SMB over the public internet !

------
jmull
COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM _shaking fist into the air_

------
kerng
Active Desktop - not sure what Windows version that shipped with, but the long
term strategies and ideas were kinda cool - oh, nostalgia. I believe Microsoft
soon after shipping 95 and threatened by Netscape realized that the Internet
is the future, and the browser the OS. The rest is an antitrust lawsuit
settled more then a decade later.

~~~
gattilorenz
Shipped with 98,although you could add it to windows 95 by installing IE5.
This also gave 95 the quick start bar with "show desktop" next to Start, if I
remember correctly.

------
diebir
"You see, back in 1994 Facebook hadn't yet invented the Internet, so if you
wanted to go online and let your computer transfer viruses to and from other
computers, you had to use one of the many private networks."

Wrong, the Internet was well and alive and anybody who had a clue was looking
at it. Microsoft, with its typical arrogance thought they could build their
own and supersede the Internet. It was a monumental failure and Microsoft
Network became a joke and embarrassment.

This view is not even from the US, but from the outside, a place where the
whole country's internet connection went via a single link.

------
tomc1985
Was not expecting this to turn into a COM rant

~~~
jkaplowitz
You weren't sure what focus was going to win, but in the end, COM1.

------
aj7
“Microsoft had already released all this fancy new tech with NT 3.1.”

Are you serious? Did you ever see Finder 4.3 on a MacII? Finder 6?

------
agumonkey
similarly, win98 shell was html + js :)

~~~
isostatic
Active Desktop came with IE4, worked just as badly on Win95.

As a concept it wasn't terrible, but with machines of the day it was massively
unstable and a resource hog, and almost every home user was on dialup, which
meant that there was no access unless you were actively using the internet.

~~~
pjmlp
And now everyone gets crazy doing Electron apps.

~~~
agumonkey
Eight Lectobytes End Constantly TROlling Newbs

