
Hacker95.css – Make Hacker News look like Windows 95 - chowderman
https://github.com/chowderman/Hacker95
======
rob74
Looks nice, but the shadows on the buttons are wrong: the top and left edges
should be white, the other two black. This way, the buttons look more like
elements of a status bar, those had the borders reversed to produce an "inset"
effect (like in this screenshot:
[http://173.255.209.242/chhtml/toolkit/demos/Windows/gifs/gad...](http://173.255.209.242/chhtml/toolkit/demos/Windows/gifs/gadgets1.gif))

~~~
hunter2_
I was always slightly perplexed as to how that difference in orientation of
colors leads to the out/in effect. I guess it's not so much the left/right but
the top/bottom that really achieves this phenomenon, given how most daily
light sources come from above (sun, ceiling fixtures, floor lamps) and there
are relatively few instances of uplighting (landscaping, ...) around us.

~~~
sjwright
The up–down orientation unquestionably comes from the near-universality of
light sources being above you. You'll notice that intense up-lighting is
almost never found in the natural or artificial world.

(It's true that upwards-firing lights are often used in interior decoration,
but these are almost always to illuminate walls and ceilings above us which
then bounce light down to the contents of a room. Also, some techniques in
photographic and studio lighting do use some up-firing lights, but these act
as shadow fill, never as the primary light source—except when an unusual look
is intended.)

To the extent that we expect a certain left–right orientation, this will
almost certainly be predominantly a matter of consistency with prior graphical
user interfaces. The near-universal standard of a top/left lighting metaphor
goes at least as far back as the original Apple Lisa/Macintosh which cast its
1-bit, 1 pixel shadows to the bottom/right.

The fact that people of near-identical cultures can natively integrate either
left-hand driving or right-hand driving suggests to me that there's no
inherent reason why it needed to be one way or the other. Had the first
interfaces begun with a top/right lighting metaphor, we'd probably be all as
native to that as British people are with right-hand-drive vehicles.

~~~
Moru
Upward-firing lights are aimed at the roof to spread the light and create more
ambient light. So is primarily used as a down-light by reflection anyway.

I'm not sure the left/right shadows are a learned thing from user interfaces.
As a kid, long before I got my first computer I was drawing 3D forms. Shadows
always was drawn as light came from the upper left.

Maybe this is because I draw with right hand so prefer light to come from the
left so I don't shadow my hand?

~~~
hunter2_
Now you've got me wondering if the left/right shadow preference might actually
be rooted in other natural phenomena besides human dominant handedness, like
something with the rotation of the earth a.k.a. sun setting in the west.

~~~
hnlmorg
You're over thinking things there. More likely it's just an artefact of those
interfaces being designed in the countries who read left to right.

Off topic but I like how you've referenced that infamous IRC meme in your HN
handle.

~~~
mPReDiToR
What? The username just shows as ______*_ for me?

------
cryptoz
It wouldn't be HN if I didn't say that I think Windows 95 had solid blue title
bars rather than the 98/NT gradient.

But yeah this is cool :)

~~~
asveikau
NT didn't have the gradients either. 2000 did.

~~~
TimTheTinker
Win98 did though.

~~~
asveikau
That's correct. 98 was the first release to have it, chronologically speaking.
2000 was the first NT based Windows to have it.

So 98/NT didn't make sense to me. NT4, the last release to use the name NT,
had a very Win95-like appearance. I also remember NT 3.51 (and I guess there
were other 3.x) that had a very Win3.1-like UI despite being 32 bit.

~~~
cryptoz
Yeah you got me. Fair enough.

Windows 2000 was amazing and just my favorite OS. Saying that as a linux user.

~~~
coronadisaster
Win2000 was the most perfect and least buggy Windows version of all time.

~~~
asveikau
It didn't seem buggy at the time but you wouldn't want it on the public
internet with all its security bugs.

It would be nice if Microsoft just backported security improvements and other
kernel type stuff without messing with UI.

~~~
coronadisaster
Of course but the problem with updates is that you can never only get security
updates... You have to get "feature enhencements" too... It would be nice to
have 2 branches.

~~~
asveikau
I don't mean just security updates though. I mean _systemic_ security
improvements coming from redesigns of components. Some of the changes are
feature enhancements in the kernel too, some affecting security.

For all the criticisms of UAC or the Win8+ app store I would sooner trust a
sandbox on recent windows than I would on Win2k. Even the XP SP2 era had huge
security re-vamps that Win2k never got.

And there are performance things. I happen to know that Win32 message pumps
have a better locking scheme on Win7 than they did in 2k.

The issue is in order to get enhancements in the lower layers you get forced
into other bloat higher up.

Disclaimer, I spent a few years as a dev on the Windows team.

------
josefrichter
Hacker News already does look like made in Win95 age.

~~~
dexen
Simplicity has strong potential for standing the test of time.

~~~
dddddaviddddd
Combined with consistency.

------
t0astbread
I also wrote something like this a while ago. I created a GitHub Gist so you
can compare:
[https://gist.github.com/T0astBread/1e04aed3c8e1c3f19d5fc5e5a...](https://gist.github.com/T0astBread/1e04aed3c8e1c3f19d5fc5e5a5602281)

Someone mentioned how much they miss beveled buttons and how every button
would be cooler with a beveled edge so I thought "well how about making
everything beveled then", then I got a little carried away...

Anyways, mine is utterly impractical. I don't know how but I managed to make
the site sluggish with just CSS. It's probably also broken in Chrome. This
looks extremely cool in comparison!

------
crazygringo
To do this for Chrome, all you need is the popular Stylus extension [1] and OP
can upload it to userstyles.org [2] for even more convenience (don't need to
download a CSS file).

Also to be even more Windows 95-ey I recommend making the top links (new,
past, etc.) look like a tab bar! (I really like the way the footer links look
like a status bar.)

[1]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne)

[2] [https://userstyles.org/](https://userstyles.org/)

~~~
spuz
If you don't want to install a 3rd party extension (maybe it seems like too
much of a risk for such a frivolous purpose), then you can make your own. Just
download hacker95.css and create a file called manifest.json in the same
directory with these contents:

{ "name": "Hacker News 95 Extension", "version": "1.0", "description": "Hacker
News 95 Extension", "permissions": ["activeTab"], "content_scripts": [ {
"matches":
["[https://new.ycombinator.com/*"](https://new.ycombinator.com/*")], "css":
["hacker95.css"] } ], "manifest_version": 2 }

Then in your Chrome Extensions settings, find the option to "Load unpacked
extension" and point it to your directory.

~~~
spuz
So my anti-procrastination setting kicked in just as I made this comment and
now I can neither edit it or delete it. I made the same comment again with
proper formatting of the json file.

------
slowwriter
Honestly my immediate thought was, doesn't it kind of already? Just kidding

~~~
MaxBarraclough
I don't think it's an insult anyway. I like the clean and simple look, and the
Windows 95 theme gets a lot right in terms of UI design. Generally high
contrast, easy to tell at a glance which widgets are clickable.

Hacker95 seems to get the Windows 95 buttons wrong though, showing them as
'sunken', and not giving a clear impression of being clickable.

~~~
slowwriter
It's a joky insult. Hacker News and Windows 95 have in common that they look
objectively old. But what they also have in common is that they are function
over form in an atypically pure sense, especially compared to some modern UI
design.

Although I prefer a more balanced approach on the spectrum of pure function
and pure form, pure function beats pure form any day

------
reggegg
Seems no one has mentioned it yet but what bothers me about most of these
stylesheet hacks is that they never get the font right. Granted I don't know
what it would take to make the old font (MS Sans Serif?) browser-compatible,
possible copyright issues aside(?)

~~~
bbbobbb
Check out this article on this exact topic:
[https://vistaserv.net/blog/90s-fonts-modern-
browsers](https://vistaserv.net/blog/90s-fonts-modern-browsers)

------
allie1
Is it rigged to give you the good ole' blue screen of death every 10th click
or so?

~~~
oleganza
Because real Windows 95/98 had BSOD every 10th click or so and people could
not get work done at all.

Funnily, in last few months on macOS Catalina i've got more kernel panics than
in prior 13 years on Mac and 8 years of Windows combined.

~~~
SllX
I know this is unsolicited and I apologize for that, but check your Console
logs immediately after you boot back up if you haven't already, there might be
a hardware issue, and you ought to be able to get a good idea of what's going
on by seeing what kext is affecting it.

My current and previous laptop have been fine, but I used to have issues all
the time on a much older laptop, and the issue back then, I forgot exactly
which piece of hardware it was, but there was a bug in one of the drivers that
was patched in an update, I think it was 10.4.9 or 10.4.10 that had the issue,
a known issue at the Apple Store; but they couldn't do anything about it from
behind the Genius Bar. Generally if you're getting kernel panics though,
there's either something wrong with a piece of hardware or with the driver for
it, although it could be any kind of kext causing the issue if you have any
3rd party kexts installed.

------
perryizgr8
I wish win10 had a win95 or win 2000 theme. I really love this aesthetic. I
used to use win7 like this too.

------
pmachinery
I love retro-ish design but it's often not practical or pleasing, past the
initial novelty, and a reminder of why things change.

This looks excellent (from the screenshot). It reminds me of a mid-late 90s
Windows Usenet newsreader, which I wouldn't mind if every web forum looked
like.

------
anyfoo
I’ve added a user style sheet in Safari somewhat recently to fix an annoying
video player. I think it was easy to find in Settings. Can someone check if
that works? Not near my laptop right now, and I use a 3rd party app on the
phone.

~~~
kalleboo
It's easy to add as a user style sheet in Safari (Preferences > Advanced >
Stylesheet), but there's no CSS selector to limit it to a domain, so it makes
the whole web turn Windows 95 style, not just Hacker News.

------
chowderman
This is a CSS stylesheet to theme your Hacker News in a Windows95/98 style

~~~
bobbyz
You have installation instructions for Firefox, which has like a 5% market
share, yet you don't have instructions for chrome. That cracked me up

~~~
userbinator
Chrome removed that functionality a few years ago:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1ymfgw/user_stylesh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chrome/comments/1ymfgw/user_stylesheet_customcss_support_removed_in/)

(The comment there that removing this "is going to help increase speed
significantly in the future" is pure BS. If anything, user stylesheet
functionality was handled in native code --- just adding another CSS to the
page --- which makes it far more efficient than going through the whole
JS/extensions route.)

Ironically, IE11 is the last MS browser to support user stylesheets
(Tools->Options->Accessibility) but Edge doesn't.

Even in Firefox, the fact that it's named
"toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets" is ominous.

The Internet is becoming more and more user-hostile, and it's not just
websites who are responsible.

~~~
encom
>The Internet is becoming more and more user-hostile, and it's not just
websites who are responsible.

That's because the webbrowser has been pushed away from hyperlinked documents
viewer, to essentially a virtual machine running untrusted code from anywhere.

It's probably Googles fault somehow. They seem determined to ruin everything.

------
jrururufuf666
fits nice to my wetransfer alternative
[http://www.upload95.com](http://www.upload95.com)

~~~
benedikt
The gradient on the titlebar was from windows 98 btw, windows 95 didn't have
it.

win95:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Windows_95_at...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Windows_95_at_first_run.png)

win98:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Sound_Recorde...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/Sound_Recorder_in_Windows_98.png)

------
digitalsin
I love this! Can you do reddit now please? :)

------
jasoneckert
I like this, because nostalgia adds fun to news!

My personal preference, however, would be to see Hacker News look like IRIX.

------
Sebb767
Great project! A screenshot in the README would be awesome, though.

------
DarkWiiPlayer
I already have lots of custom CSS for HN though :D

------
paramost
Now all we need is a good dark mode :)

~~~
Moru
I'm using darkreader for firefox, works ok.

[https://darkreader.org/](https://darkreader.org/)

------
DonHopkins
That makes me feel 25 years younger!

------
badrabbit
Sir/Madam, you are a hero!

------
11thEarlOfMar
Themes...

Sitting in these Zoom meetings, that's about all I think about.

Three Participants:
[https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/pl...](https://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/shared/npr/styles/placed_wide/nprshared/201805/582776998.png)

Four Participants: [https://www.feelingthevibe.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/NU...](https://www.feelingthevibe.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/NUP_186210_11411-1024x684.jpg)

Eight:
[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thebradybunch/images/3/3...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/thebradybunch/images/3/3a/The_Brady_Bunch_Movie_opening_screenshot.png/revision/latest?cb=20140909185228)

Nine:
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0b/a1/b6/0ba1b63cf281efbe48eb...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0b/a1/b6/0ba1b63cf281efbe48eb455025970ee4.jpg)

Silly.

Sorry.

