
Windows 95 UI Design - luu
https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805
======
RodgerTheGreat
A generation was raised on usable designs which clearly communicated
interactability with a consistent visual language. It is only natural that
they would come to think of computers as inherently ordered, understandable
devices. Machines had always been this way.

It was obvious to this new generation that the affordances of youth were
purely redundant. Clutter. Overhead. Junk! Widget by widget, pixel by pixel,
bevels were smoothed. Tasteful gradients and transparency replaced harsh
outlines. Explanatory text was tucked away. Manuals became brochures, then a
lonely slip of paper with a URL. Maybe a QR code.

Now my screen is the very picture of elegance and sophistication. There are no
extraneous details. Indeed, there are no details. I caress my phone's surface
gently, hoping to see a sliver of its rapturous visage peel back, hinting that
I have found the first step in the puzzle box of its interaction model.

Alas, no dice. Maybe I can hunt down a how-to video... to show me how to hunt
down a video...

~~~
ordinaryperson
Compounding this frustration (on iOS at least) is stuff like "force touch" and
hidden toolbars. Depending on how hard you press a button you might get a
totally different UI interaction.

Are others good at knowing exactly how many newtons of force it takes to
follow a hyperlink instead of triggering this horrid mini-preview window?
Maybe that's why Jonny Ive made millions of dollars while I work like a stiff
for a living.

Want to open a new tab in mobile Safari while on a webpage? Oh I must tap the
invisible button bar at the bottom. So obvious.

I just wish Apple et al. didn't force these choices on us, that we could
disable silliness like force touch and hidden toolbars. But alas one cannot.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Force touch is the best evidence we have that designers have lost their power
at Apple.

The best thing Steve Jobs did was hire serious designers and defend their
ideas against the rest of the organization. That’s clearly not happening
anymore.

My guess is that “Designer at Apple” became such a desirable title that the
design roles have been taken over by wannabees.

~~~
zapzupnz
Force Touch is on its way out. Has been for about two generations of iPhone.
There's now Haptic Touch which is nothing but a long-press with better
feedback.

~~~
redwall_hp
It has the same problem: invisible, undiscoverable UI driven by seemingly
random gestures. Who cares if you long press or press harder? You still can't
tell it's an option unless you try it on everything.

~~~
GeekyBear
So exactly like right clicking on items to see if a contextual menu pops up in
Windows 95?

~~~
egeozcan
It's easy to discover when there are only two buttons on your mouse. If it had
one and pressing strongly did something else, you'd be right.

~~~
GeekyBear
It's just as easy to press harder "force touch" as it is to right click.

Sorry, but the Windows 95 user interface had the exact same discoverability
issue.

~~~
soylentgraham
Opening a Context menu was never a destructive action though, so you could
click that other button on your mouse all day without risk. You have to be
taught that a context menu exists once, but it's safe & consistent from then
on

~~~
GeekyBear
Force touching an item to see if there is a contextual menu isn't a
destructive action.

That doesn't change the fact that neither interface gives you a way to know in
advance which items have associated contextual menus.

~~~
franga2000
But if you "hard-press" a button that doesn't support hard-pressing, won't it
just detect a normal press? Depending on what the button is, that might be
destructive or at the very least time-consuming.

~~~
GeekyBear
Newbie Windows 95 users would quite frequently hide the entire start bar
because they accidentally moved the mouse while trying to click on an item,
and the system interpreted that as a drag intended to resize the start bar to
a zero height.

At that point they could no longer use their computer at all until they got
external help.

~~~
gsich
You still see a small bar even with "zero" height.

~~~
zapzupnz
Which was of absolutely zero use to them now as it remains today; they don't
understand what happened.

~~~
gsich
There is a different cursor when you hover it. At some point you can't help
people anymore.

------
Stratoscope
> _The ellipsis hints that this button opens a dialog, instead of immediately
> executing an action._

That's not exactly what the ellipsis is intended to communicate.

Have you ever wondered why File/Open... has the ellipsis, but in a properly
designed app, Help/About does _not_ have it? Even though Help/About opens a
dialog too?

The distinction is that the ellipsis indicates that a command will take some
action after further user input. The user input may be anything like text
entry, selecting from a list, or just a Yes/No or OK/Cancel confirmation. But
the key point is that the command will _do_ something after that user input
(unless the user cancels).

An About box should not take any action or cause any change to the state of
your document or system. It's just information displayed that the user can
dismiss with the OK button or close icon. So it doesn't get the ellipsis.

~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
According to Apple HIG plain confirmations did not require an ellipsis:

"Don’t use an ellipsis character if the command displays an alert box to warn
the user of a potentially dangerous action, especially if the command displays
an alert box only sometimes. In this case you are simply giving the user an
opportunity to cancel a potentially dangerous action (such as causing a loss
of data), not asking for more information."

~~~
Stratoscope
Oops, thank you for the correction!

So the ellipsis is only when the user must actually enter or select some
information, not if it's just a simple confirmation.

The Windows 95 guidelines seem a bit less clear about this, but I think they
follow the same idea.

------
petilon
The Windows 95 UI was inspired by NextStep. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_desktop.png)

Before Windows 95 was released there was CTL3D.DLL which gave a NextStep-like
look & feel to Windows 3.1. See this image for the improvement made by
CTL3D.DLL:
[http://www.win3x.org/screens/15nvtbm.gif](http://www.win3x.org/screens/15nvtbm.gif)

~~~
statictype
Wow - does this bring back some memories.

I remember when CTL3D.dll was all the rage.

Good times.

To think we used to worry about VB programs needing a separate runtime to
distribute them and Delphi programs, while stand-alone, took up almost 200KB
for a minimal app!

~~~
thom
Ah, THREED.VBX, good times indeed.

~~~
dguaraglia
Hahah, yes! I was obsessed with THREED.VBX, but because I was learning C at
the time ended up writing a whole library of Windows custom-drawn controls
that looked exactly the same. I guess it was only later that I learned there
was nothing special about VBX libraries and that you could (with some
boilerplate) make them work from C.

Kids nowadays have it so easy with their Electrons and QTs...

------
csomar
Here is something else: The interface was "responsive". And I don't mean the
responsive designs we have today for HTML but that when you click a button,
you get a "response" very fast from the monitor.

Now, with these new interfaces and stuff, most of them are so lag-y that you
can notice them with your eyes. It's very frustrating.

I tried Bisq a couple days ago. The application was apparently made with
Electron and HTML/JS. First, it used around 4.1Gb of memory. The interface was
not responsive and then it crushed.

I'm using a 16Gb/i7 2018 MacBook Pro and there is lags for most of the buttons
in the Finder application.

~~~
zozbot234
> but that when you click a button, you get a "response" very fast from the
> monitor.

This was important enough back then that some of the UI was implemented in
kernel mode on NT-class operating systems, specifically in order to preserve
that responsiveness. AIUI, Win9x did not have a complete user-mode/supervisor-
mode distinction, but the UI code was written on a very low level and tightly
coupled with the OS itself, for similar reasons.

------
_trampeltier
Back then you also could create your own theme. You could set the colors for
text, backround, buttons etc. and every App did respect and use it. Today you
can choose dark or light mode and almost no App does respect it, instead they
bring there own colors and options.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
I've been a theme creator for a few decades now, and modifying how programs
looked is what got me into development in the first place 30 years ago. The
constant stripping of user definable visuals in modern computing is a
legitimately depressing thing for me to see happen. It's just another step
along the "you don't own the device or the software, we're just letting you
borrow it" path.

The constant push with SAAS and cloud-based data and all the rest, just makes
me think we're heading back towards a terminal/mainframe environment and soon
we'll be "consuming" the Internet in the same way we consume interactive Cable
TV.

~~~
HNthrow22
agreed man, have fond memories of tweaking themes for daily drivers like irc
client, winamp foobar2000, compared to like spotify or discord now feels so
neutered and limited in terms of customizing appearance.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Yeah and everything now is so disjointed. It shits me. Eg not only can’t you
customise Spotify or Discord visually, but they don’t even respect the OS
controls. You can’t resize them properly to fit windows 10 tiling, the menus
are a broken mess, etc.

They insist on doing everything themselves and ignoring all standards which
just ends up looking ugly and broken.

One of my main passions in theming is making your entire system look
cohesively styled. Hell, I’d rather have standard Windows look but every
program using the system UI so at least it all looks the same. I despise
Spotify, Discord, and all Electron apps for this reason. They look so
amateurish.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Same here. And it's not just theming. Windows has always had a lot of small,
lesser-known conventions around UI elements, some accessibility features, and
a way for additional software to hook up to the UI. None of that is respected
when an application decides to draw its own UI on a canvas.

------
divbzero
I forgot how nice it was to have underlined alt keyboard shortcuts. We got so
much right so early in the age of personal computing. Goodbye to all that,
hello Ribbon and flatness everywhere.

It’s as if we’re in the Middle Ages now looking back at the great ruins of
ancient Athens.

~~~
andrepd
The ribbon is actually a good interface, for me at least, much more pleasant
to use than toolbars.

The flatness and whitespace everywhere though, that can die in a fire.

~~~
grawprog
But toolbars are essentially the same thing except they don't waste space, are
moveable, resizable, typically customizable, and can be hidden.

~~~
mavhc
Pretty sure having every toolbar open at once would use more space.

Ribbon is dynamic to your current task, using a table? Table tab is available.

~~~
catalogia
> _Ribbon is dynamic to your current task, using a table? Table tab is
> available._

So were toolbars in Microsoft Office were similarly dynamic.

~~~
akho
Toolbars were not keyboard accessible, and usually unlabeled. The ribbon is a
huge improvement.

~~~
eitland
Toolbars came with explanations that popped up if you hovered.

They also were primarily shortcuts as everything could be reached using the
menus anyway.

~~~
omegabravo
Ribbon has explanations that popup if you hover

Ribbon contains everything that is available in the menus, and is collapsible.
Ribbon also supports keyboard accelerators

~~~
eitland
They also swosh around.

They also aren't predictable.

------
twotwotwo
The old desktop approach had some cool things. List views tended to support
common operations, e.g. sorting, drag-and-drop, multiselection, common ways to
do renames and type-ahead-find. Tree views had some standardization, too.
Crowded menus/toolbars could be ugly, but you could discover a lot of
functionality going through them. Right-click tended to expose a set of verbs.

These things often exist now or have an analog (e.g. long press is right-click
in mobile UI), but not everywhere and not always done the same way. Mobile has
some inconsistency; the Web has a good bit.

The modern has plenty of its own UI/UX things--URLs and the Back button for
the win, dev tools/view source are awesome, and certain cool things can come
from services not living entirely on your device. Something like hiding
clutter at the cost of discoverability is a _win_ for many people.

Still think it's interesting to compare and think about what can be usefully
brought forward from the past.

~~~
pcurve
25 years later, we still don't have good, standardized, robust Ui controls for
browsers.

Why is there no HTML tag for creating menu bar and nested dropdown menu?

Instead we have to search through thousands of libraries or plugins with mixed
bag of accessibility.

Just that control alone will probably save companies globally billions of
dollars in wasted labor searching, building, and maintaining.

~~~
chii
> Why is there no HTML tag for creating menu bar and nested dropdown menu?

because HTML was never designed to be a application interface, and I don't see
a menu-bar nor dropdown as necessary for a document display.

What's needed for the web is a common and standarized (i.e., browser provided)
library for application UI that's distinct from the existing HTML markup. They
should not mix, and if you have a document (rather than a web-app), you use
HTML, but if you intend to write an application UI, you would use that
library.

I forsee something like WASM compiled QT or some such to be the beginnings of
such an api.

~~~
pjmlp
Just like XHTML was supposed to be, oh well.

I think WASM will bring "Flash" back, just in a different form, and now
everyone will be happy because it is standard.

~~~
chii
flash was only bad due to the inherent vulnerabilities and capabilities that
browsers werent expected to have (such as being able to write to disk
directly).

WASM can be sandboxed properly, unlike flash.

~~~
pjmlp
So much that you can easily compile Heartbleed into WASM, great sandboxing.

------
buboard
Sadly , this is a theme with tech, it progresses in cycles. FB replaces forums
which replace yahoo which replace newsgroups. In terms of ideas, there is very
few that wasn't there in the 90s, (infinite scrolling maybe; afforded by
increased RAM - i can't think of others). Since CPU performance has stangated,
the last few cycles of generic computing have focused on design. That's the
main selling point now, and you see that in the proliferation of UX jobs and
attempts to squeeze the last drops of user engagement with things such as
'onboarding' etc. Design has become inane, of course, it completely ignores
human capacities such as contour-perception, response time, consistency, but
it doesn't matter, because the game has changed: it's now about how you
capture the user faster and then lock her in. Wasting their time trying to
figure out the app is now a positive sign: "the user is engaged".

------
est
I used to play with VB5 and VB6, the RAD process was better than any of
today's separated backend/frontend antd CSS-layout scaffolding data binding
frameworks bullshit.

The best part of the unified UI controls is you can use tools like Spy++ to
discover programs on the fly. Today's Internet there are thousands of web
frameworks and you need thousands of source mapping or else it's an ocean of
minified gibberish.

~~~
k__
Serious question: if it was so much better, why is it gone now?

~~~
stickfigure
I started my professional programming career in the Windows 3.x days. Some
things that come to mind:

* The web solved the software distribution problem. There were some pretty good tools for building GUI apps in the 90s but the tools for getting software to the customer _sucked_. Complex installers, no autoupdates, "DLL hell" incompatibilities.

* There never really were any great tools for building cross-platform GUIs. You built for Windows on x86, that was it. Widgets were shipped as binary COM components. Now you need to be on multiple OSes, multiple hardware architectures, and multiple form factors. VB wasn't going to give you that.

* Formatting text sucked. Actually, formatting in general sucked - the RAD GUI builders built awesome fixed-size dialogs, but now screens vary from watch-sized to wall-sized. Embedded HTML components really made layout easier... and once you start putting things in HTML, it tends to take over.

* All those pretty 3d effects in Win 95 UIs? Those were a _bitch_ to get right. Hours of trial and error drawing extra lines of black and white and grey pixels. It looked good but it was a lot of effort that would have been better spent building real features.

~~~
thrower123
Cross-platform is more of an excuse than a reason. The idea is always that you
write an app once, and it magically works on Windows and Mac and phones, and
toaster ovens.

Except that never actually works, for anything but the lowest common
denominator trash apps. Unfortunately people are convinced that this is
something that should be pursued; the only real result is lowering the bar
across the board and eroding compliance with long-established platform UX
guidelines.

------
accrual
The following link has been posted here before but is an excellent dive into
the 95 UI for those looking for more to read:

Designing Windows 95's User Interface (2018)

[https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-
windows-9...](https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-
windows-95s-user-interface/)

------
thdrdt
I see a lot of designers who are very creative but are creating artwork
instead of interaction designs.

The problem is: it sells.

Customer wants a website, designer makes a peace of art, customer thinks it
looks amazing, contracts are signed.

The the trouble starts when it is getting build.

Real texts are much longer than designed, the available pictures don't fit as
good as the hand picked stock pictures, and the interaction.. well it all
looked great on paper.

I believe it's dumb to get contracts this way because the project always
delays because the client doesn't get what works.

It's better to sell customers a moodboard and then design interaction as the
project moves along.

------
jonny383
Writing a post about usability design as a Twitter thread is horribly ironic.

------
pcurve
Even to this date, there is something oddly satisfying about clicking those
buttons. It feels like I'm operating a machine and actually getting things
done.

~~~
leetrout
The startup I worked for in 2012 went with some skeuomorphic design elements
like lit / unlit LEDs and I loved it then and still love it now.

[https://dribbble.com/shots/573197-Hal-90](https://dribbble.com/shots/573197-Hal-90)

------
qwtel
I think about windows 95 at least once a month, wondering why the web apps I
work on still can’t match it in terms of performance and usability, never mind
resource utilization.

One thing that has been a staple since win95 days is the ability to resize
windows, sidebars, columns; almost everything, really. Rarely is this found on
the web today, or so poorly implemented that it’s thrashing the UI thread when
one or more resize callbacks are triggered. Even without that, layout +
painting alone would probably lose the race against 95 UI tech.

Another “legacy” UI that stood out to me is blender. It looks decades old
(until it was revamped recently), is probably a hodgepodge of C/C++ but stays
smooth as everything can be resized even on dated hardware.

I can’t help but think that the UI engineers of old were a much more
professional bunch, and that the field has mostly regressed since then.

------
gitgud
Windows 95 followed an extremely standardised approach to design. This allowed
for incredible ease of use, but people get tired of standards and want to set
themselves apart...

This is not always good for UX, but new and different GUI's are an inevitable
progression from homogeneous ecosystems like; Windows 95, Bootstrap,
Material...

People just want to be different from the standard

------
taf2
All I can add to this is my experience with my daughter and the switch from
iOS 6 to iOS 7. Our iPad was about a year old and I decided to upgrade to
ios7. She was 3 and we would take her on walks and she’d hold her iPad and
watch shows (bad parents I know). Anyways with iOS 7 she got so frustrated
because she could figure out how to watch her favorite show (play button was
nearly impossible to see and they started including shows that you need to be
online to watch but with no clear indicator). She threw the iPad an amazing
distance with unreal strength. I wished it was more obvious for her as ios6 a
3 year old could master...

------
pkorzeniewski
I use Windows 98 quite often and it's sad how crappy modern UIs have become
and how we just got used to it.. really feels like a huge step backwards and
it only gets worse

------
yellow_lead
Hey, at least Win95 UI wasn't based on Electron. I'd prefer this UI if it
meant Win95's snappyness. (most of the time :)

~~~
ygra
Heck, the whole of Windows 95 has a smaller install size than any Electron app
...

------
OrgNet
Windows 2000 was the best... please bring it back (without the new tracking
ideas, of course).

~~~
mixmastamyk
64bit XP in classic UI mode was purty good as well. My Mate desktop is still
not as good but one of the closest modern options.

------
notadoc
Windows 95 had an obvious UI, but was rather cluttered.

The original Macintosh up through System 7 was perhaps peak of OS UI design,
the simplicity and obviousness is a marvel. The modern Mac experience is no
where near that simple, particularly since the Yosemite UI overhaul.

The original iPad had pretty great UI design too, until the iOS 7 redesign.
Now I think it's probably the most confusing UI that exists on a modern OS.
Nothing is obvious. Multitasking and copy/paste on iPad is befuddling to even
the smartest and most technical people I know.

UI design that was perfected 30+ years ago has been completely shelved and
lost by designers who are designing for other designers and their portfolios,
rather than for users.

~~~
mgerdts
> "The original Macintosh up through System 7 was perhaps peak of OS UI
> design, the simplicity and obviousness is a marvel."

I first used System 7 after having used DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 and a
bit of SunOS. With that background, I found System 7 and the silly hardware
limitations to be anything but intuitive.

To this day I find it annoying to have to go all the way to to top of the
monitor to get to a menu. Arguably that was less of a pain on the tiny screen
of a Mac SE, but becomes real where than one app is open in a way that the
windowed app feature is used in a meaningful way.

An example of silly hardware limitations includes substituting an eject button
on the floppy drive for dragging it to the trash. The same action used to
delete files or folders is used to regain possession of my precious files.

The single button on a mouse to make it simple sounds nice, but then there are
modifiers using command - giving the same functionality a windows user would
expect from a right click.

~~~
theandrewbailey
> An example of silly hardware limitations includes substituting an eject
> button on the floppy drive for dragging it to the trash. The same action
> used to delete files or folders is used to regain possession of my precious
> files.

1000x this. I remember using a Mac for the first time at school (1997-ish). I
needed to put a file on a floppy, which was similar enough to Windows 95 up to
ejecting the floppy. I ran my finger over the drive area and asked someone (a
teacher, maybe), who said 'drag the floppy to the trash'. 'I want to eject it,
not delete it!' I did it anyway (if it got deleted, just copy it again), and
was surprised that it worked. I made another mental note that PCs were
superior with their physical eject buttons, as I realized that a Mac could eat
a floppy (like a stereo eating a cassette tape) if the drive (or OS or mouse)
failed.

------
FpUser
It looks a bit ugly but it is very functional and straight to the point.
Needed just a little visual touch to account for modern monitors. Instead we
have fucking light gray text on white background, window borders/title area
that are indistinguishable from the rest accompanied by great hunting game of:
find an interactive element on on a screen

~~~
Narishma
It doesn't look ugly to me. It looks better than most modern interfaces.

------
anjel
My two favorite things to hate about the windows UI: white on white text entry
fields have been difficult to find since win 7 and have been held over into
win10. Now the scroll bars are white on white and you have to hover your mouse
cursor over the invisible scrolling square button to reveal where it is in
order to see how far along in the scroll you are instead of referring at a
glance. What were they thinking?

------
alkonaut
I still make windows desktop software in my day job and a lot of these things
are still there. Like ellipses for elements launching dialog. I also think
resizable windows etc are still displaying a draggable corner as a hint?

All of this is pretty natural - so long as you design native desktop software
using native controls.

------
Causality1
"Flat UI" is the bane of my existence.

------
Darkphibre
As a certified MSDE in the late 90s, I cringed frequently in the early 2000s
as design guideline after guideline was violated and landed by the wayside.
There was so much thought put into every element, and guidelines of placement
down to the pixels. And you were tested on all of it to get/retain
certification.

As others have said, targeting multiple resolutions and dpis, and supporting
reactive/resizable canvases, has driven most of those guidelines to the curb.
A different era.

------
philefstat
There's a React component library based on the Windows 95 UI:
[https://react95.github.io/React95](https://react95.github.io/React95)
[https://github.com/arturbien/React95](https://github.com/arturbien/React95)

------
tus88
I still use Win98 daily for gaming and love it, fight me.

~~~
jedberg
The last patch for Win98 was in 2013. I really hope you don't put that thing
on the internet.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Who cares? If it is just for gaming, then if it gets infected it isn't going
to compromise anything important.

~~~
jedberg
The most common infection is the one where they turn your computer into a node
of a botnet. From there it can consume your bandwidth, launch attacks on other
people, or be used to distribute files, such as child porn.

Do you want to be implicated in a child porn ring, and have the evidence
sitting right on your computer?

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Chances are said Win98 box is off when not in use, and it is very unlikely
that there is much of that kind of malware targeting Win98 anyway since it has
a nigh-0% install base. What does actually run on it is probably going to be
noticed because it's probably running on period hardware and the resource
usage will not be nearly so negligible as it is today.

------
mtm7
I appreciate this analysis and agree with some of the points, although I have
to add: for any interface that I use daily (such as a file management system),
I prefer the modern version — flat design and all.

I don’t want heavy borders to show that something can be resized (just show me
a different cursor when I hover), or column titles styled like buttons, or an
always-visible scrollbar (I rarely need to know a “vague” measurement of files
in a folder). To me, this just makes an interface more confusing.

Although I’ve been spoiled by Mac over the last few years, so maybe this
argument is more about Windows.

------
doomlaser
The big innovations in Windows 95 UI were the Start Button and the Task Bar.
Both were excellent additions proven most evidently by their continuing
presence in Windows 10 today.

------
meerita
Win 95 made me buy a PC, basically. I owned macs (from 7.5 to 9.2) but 95 made
me buy a PC and start enjoying another kind of computing.

------
RenRav
> _The ellipsis hints that this button opens a dialog, instead of immediately
> executing an action._

Can't believe I never noticed this.

------
pvg
UI is different on the web and mobile devices but if you fire up the Win 10
file explorer, almost all of the items shown are still there or arguably
better. Maybe resize (which you can now do from any window edge) is a little
more finicky.

~~~
jplayer01
The most annoying thing about Windows 10 is how it makes _clear_ improvements
in some areas, but then decides to be utterly brain dead in other areas. The
task manager is hugely improved. The file explorer is better. The copy/move
file dialog is far more useful. But then they abandon the Control Panel and
give us this flat UI abomination that doesn’t even support one of the original
ideas that made Windows 95 such a hit: Multitasking. You literally can’t have
multiple copies of Settings open to modify different parts of the settings at
the same time. I can’t quickly open a new window to check something while
keeping my focus on one main task ... as in, multitask. I’m forced to break my
flow and traverse back/forward through a bunch of nested settings instead of
letting me alt-tab between what I’m actually interested in. It’s terrible and
infuriating and I have no idea how this got released in this state.

And that’s before even considering how incredibly wasteful it is with space. I
hate myself and wonder where my life went wrong every time I have to open a
Settings window on a device that doesn’t have full HD or higher, because it
usually results in copious amounts of scrolling for information that could be
_easily_ displayed in 1/4th of the space. Hell, and you can forget about using
it non-maximized, because then the “advanced” links on the right side
disappear to wherever, because fuck showing you what you need at a glance.

And they _keep changing_ how you reach the actually sane, usable and
functional Control Panel windows (like the sound devices settings) and
alternate between making it easier and ridiculously obtuse. It makes me want
to bash my head against things really, really hard.

~~~
aspenmayer
I share so your frustration with Windows 10. It’s reaching iOS levels of lack
of discoverability of features.

I wrote to tell you that Control Panel itself still exists. You can get to it
from using the hidden search in Start Menu. Open Start and begin typing
Control Panel and it will show up eventually. Or you can right-click on Start
button and select it. Or even type “control panel” in command prompt or
powershell, without quotes. Apparently it shows up in File Explorer under
Desktop as well, which makes the least sense of all to my intuition. Hope that
helps.

~~~
jplayer01
Yes, I know it still exists. But they keep making you jump through hoops.
There were major versions of W10 where the start menu search _didn 't_ list
the Control Panel if you searched for it. Right-clicking the sound icon in the
tray now directs you to the new Metro Settings, and they also keep changing
how to reach the traditional Sound Control Panel.

Apparently, searching for sound now lists the old panel too, so at least
there's that.

------
bdcravens
Here's some anti-UX I observed from Uber:

[https://twitter.com/bdcravens/status/1197220786156834817](https://twitter.com/bdcravens/status/1197220786156834817)

------
veselin
Many people probably didn't notice that Microsoft Office at that time used
custom controls and was a little off from this design.

The design was very nice, but a bit over complicated. Things looked like a
control panel, which maybe makes us feel like pilots, but intimidates most
users. The open dialog is a good example. Drop down elements, lists, directory
list, label for selected directory. Later iterations fixed this and nowadays
apps try to avoid selecting files altogether if possible. Overall, design has
improved a lot since then, maybe except for the touch additions.

------
fnord77
old windows CUA allowed any ui interaction to be done with the keyboard. it
was really well thought out

------
pcdoodle
it was easier to explain over the phone too. EXP: Click Start > Control Panel
> Sound > Playback Tab > Right Click the Speakers > Set as default audio
device. Grandma can hear her youtube videos again while i'm still at the
beach.

------
rb808
That Active Desktop with pointcast ActiveX control though...

------
rosybox
If you still want this kind of UI you can have it with a Gnome or KDE linux
desktop.

~~~
petepete
I'd recommend LXDE or XFCE for this kind of desktop. With this theme, you can
even make XFCE look just like Windows 95.

[https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95](https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95)

~~~
zozbot234
I'd like to see a KDE1/GNOME1/FVWM version of this. Something that could be
packaged in a Linux distribution and be accessible out of the box.

~~~
petepete
There's a theme for Gnome 2/Mate that looks quite extensive. Pretty niche
market these days I guess.

[https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1012363/](https://www.gnome-look.org/p/1012363/)

------
ksputana
will a new OS come with W95 design ever? I would love that

~~~
muterad_murilax
ReactOS 1.0 perhaps.

~~~
Koshkin
You don’t need to wait, the current version is pretty close, if not better.

------
boksiora
very true

------
jstewartmobile
Looks like my entire wardrobe is coming back in style. About damn time!

------
bronz
back before UI was designed by committee and guided by feedback from brain-
dead iPhone users.

------
smitty1e
. . .and then there was the BSODomy. . .

Less cheekily, I recall joy of not needing to look to the bottom for more
commands and tabs.

First encounter with that paradigm was iTunes. It took me a week to realize
that half the functionality was in the nether reaches of the screen. I felt I
was the butt of some joke.

~~~
RandomBacon
Idk, back then I had worse luck with Macs crashing on me than Windows.

------
masswerk
I think, much of the recent developments in UI design (and its conceptual
space) is owed to display technology. Modern displays have different contrast
ratios from CRTs. Generally, fine details used to look softer on CRTs. So,
when flat displays were introduced, bevels didn't look right, Apple got rid of
realistic icons (formerly introduced in OS X), etc. On the other hand,
extensive regions of flat color where always a bit of a problem on CRTs (too
bright, maybe there were some artefacts from some interference – who remembers
the stripes caused by a cell phone placed next to a CRT?), but rendered
impressively on flat screens. Meaning, the old UIs didn't work like they used
to be on the new technology, while the new displays provided for a few things
which had always been a bit problematic on the old ones. Enter double
resolution displays and the necessity to render the same content on varying
resolutions. Flat design and parametric scaling seems to be the answer.
However, there's now a limited range of ways to add unobtrusive visual clues
and of compartmentalisation/grouping as compared to the old visual vocabulary.
Moreover, with the old vocabulary, a single element could have multiple visual
clues attached to it (e.g., a bevel indicated a button, the icon and its color
a task and a category, an underline in the associated text a shortcut key,
etc), while now a single element can have just a single clue added to it for
the most. Reduced visual complexity, as necessitated by the display
technology, also meant reduced conceptual complexity.

~~~
steve1977
Not sure about that. I personally found Windows 95 (or XP/Windows 7 in classic
mode) looked great on flat screens - better than on CRTs actually.

~~~
masswerk
This is actually true for Win 95 / classic Win UI. (However, you may want to
reconsider the bevels, since the graphics tend to be a bit too heavy on a flat
screen.)

P.S.: Many (including them myself) consider Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.x) as the
epitome of a UI, which matched usability, conceptual space and visual design
next to perfection considering the visual and stylistic preferences of the
time. That said, I can also see, even if I do not appreciate the road taken
specifically, why this wasn't sustainable with high resolution displays.

~~~
zozbot234
> However, you may want to reconsider the bevels, since the graphics tend to
> be a bit too heavy on a flat screen.

They looked "heavy" on pixelated, low-res flat screens (lacking the natural
Gaussian blur that a CRT gives you) but it's not like there was an alternative
back then. OTOH nowadays, with resolutions, DPIs etc. varying so much, pixel
perfect design is not the sensible choice that it was back then.

Flat design is just a bad choice, though. You can have softened bevels/3d
effects in a modern design such as Adwaita in GNOME/Linux, and that looks
quite good - perhaps the best feasible iteration on a Windows 95-like design,
all things considered.

~~~
masswerk
Mind that in the mid 1990s color CRTs still tended to be quite blurry, if it
wasn't a Trinitron display. (E.g., dithered colors were next to indiscernible
from solid colors, especially on larger RGB displays.) Also, pixels used to be
much bigger (starting at 72 dpi, eventually tending towards 96 dpi with
intermediary steps on multisync displays). With this kind of resolution on a
flat screen, the UIs do not look how they used to look on a CRT.

> Flat design is just a bad choice, though. You can have softened bevels/3d
> effects in a modern design (…)

I agree. However, I can see why we ended where we are now. Also, it's cheap
(as compared to having to maintain various resources and various color
definitions for various resolutions) …

