
Websites that look like desktop GUIs - fanf2
https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops
======
sigjuice
Desktop GUIs that look like websites :p

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_(software_framework)#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_\(software_framework\)#Software_using_Electron)

~~~
winrid
GitHub Desktop is actually pretty awesome.

What I don't get is why MongoDB Compass is so slow. It's almost like they have
artificial timeouts everywhere.

~~~
asveikau
I was explaining to someone how to generate an SSH key, they way I would
normally do when explaining git to someone not exposed.

They instead used the GitHub app and their GitHub password. I didn't see any
interaction with an SSH key.

I am not sure how I feel about that. Something seems not right about it.

~~~
thr0w3345
You can use http basic since forever with git....

~~~
WorldMaker
This isn't HTTP Basic Auth, though: these days git with the right Credential
Managers (and Git for Windows comes with a good one built in) support OAuth
Access Tokens obtained with full OAuth login flows including 2FA
authentication. It's theoretically no worse than SSH PKI, and in terms of
practicality is often better because it is easier and more convenient. (For
the users, it is clearly more complex that "install openssh" to implement if
you are trying to build a git host that supports OAuth Access Token auth.)

------
MeanSpirit
[https://webamp.org/](https://webamp.org/) this really took me back! Even the
equalizer works, and the magnetic window stickiness!

~~~
Crash0v3rid3
I really miss Winamp!

~~~
JoshGlazebrook
Man I had so many custom skins for Winamp. It really was a different time back
then.

~~~
captbaritone
I (author of Webamp) worked with the internet archive to archive ~50k Winamp
skins. The collection even features Webamp integration is you can try them out
in the browser.
[https://archive.org/details/winampskins](https://archive.org/details/winampskins)

~~~
mikeyjk
Does it work with milkdrop? That visualiser is exceptional. Unfortunately
project M isn't as good.

~~~
marcusjt
I always preferred Geiss, but either way, I wish such visualisation
capabilities were built in to Spotify... Or is there a suitable in_xxx plugin
for Winamp that will let me use its visualisations with Spotify?

------
sjwright
I'm endlessly impressed at how good Synology's DSM interface is. The
experience is so incredibly seamless in all the important ways. And it's not
just a gimmick—all of the benefits of draggable, resizable windows are there:
you can drag files between folders, you can open multiple settings windows at
the same time, and so on.

There's a live demo: [https://demo.synology.com/en-
global/dsm](https://demo.synology.com/en-global/dsm)

~~~
nolok
Agreed.

DSM is basically the reason to buy synology over competitors : you pay almost
twice the price the hardware is worth, and in exchange you get their top notch
software and support.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I am lowkey thinking of setting up a NAS / inhouse server, on the one hand I
can build something myself but OTOH I'm hearing nothing but glowing reviews
about Synology.

~~~
paws
I don't see myself buying a Synology again.

I didn't want to use mine as 'just a NAS' and was hoping the Linux+ssh they
ship would allow that, but it hasn't gone as I had in mind. Certain things I
wanted require jumping through weird extra hoops, and system decisions I don't
particularly agree with are just imposed. The toolchain generally seems quite
dated, the kernel is from 2017 (v4.4.59+) and to me their proprietary package
format (.spk) seems pointless given we already had apt-get/etc. I saw back in
December they deprecated DDSM, also DSM7 was delayed, still not out and that
was before Corona so who knows now.

If you wanted the option to spin down your disks, sorry, it's evidently
impossible b/c Synology requires you to use their partition layout which dumps
their OS partition onto all your data disks. My needs are low write/high read
& I would have preferred installing the OS on a dedicated SSD. In fact I paid
extra for a '+' Syno with SSD slots, but whoops, too bad the slots can't be
used for a bootable OS because there's no BIOS. So something, probably log
file appends for services I don't care about are why my data disks spinning
24/7\. Maybe that's good for Syno's support costs but it's not great for me.

Why not install Ubuntu you might ask? Sorry, not possible == no BIOS.

I know plenty of people love their Synos -- if it works for you, great. Just
one guy's opinion. If you need a NAS for 'just' file serving then you might
well be OK.

But if you want to do anything beyond the surface, I suggest looking
elsewhere.

~~~
sjwright
If you're not prepared to do everything the "Synology" way (most of which is
perfectly fine) then a Synology isn't for you.

I personally am very happy with my Synology doing mostly file serving, and I
use docker to run as much custom packages as I can. It's not completely
seamless but it works well for me. And I really value many parts of the
Synology hardware and software.

------
devadvance
Interesting collection. Between the veritable homages (AV notification
included) [0] and reinterpretations for various purposes (e.g., music player
[1]), it's a fun mix!

It also reminded me of the Nielsen Norman article exploring flat design and
comparing it to three-dimensional design [2]. While it's becoming less and
less possible, it would be interesting to compare the experience across
different UX patterns for first-time computer users. It seems hard to separate
familiarity and nostalgia from truly superior UX.

    
    
      [0] https://winxp.now.sh
      [1] https://poolside.fm
      [2] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/

~~~
AlexandrB
These are interesting resources, thank you. One sentence stuck out to me in
[2]:

> Early pseudo-3D GUIs and Steve-Jobs-esque skeuomorphism often produced
> heavy, clunky interfaces.

I think that this is an aesthetic assessment, not one that speaks to
usability. And while older interfaces were _aesthetically_ clunky, newer
interfaces are _functionally_ clunky - often hiding functionality (hamburger
menu) and wasting content space in exchange for the whitespace necessary to
separate elements without skeuomorphic signifiers.

~~~
icebraining
I think the Hamburger was a good solution to a real problem: that mobile
phones simply have less screen space (physical, if not in pixels) than
desktops and laptops. The problem is that people then seem to blindly apply
the solutions where they aren't needed. Too much cargo culting, not enough
thought.

~~~
GuB-42
The hamburger menu is literally a failure.

Early Android devices had a hardware menu button, press it, get a menu, simple
and consistent. It can be related to the menu bar in desktop applications.

Android 3 and 4 broke it. Google noticed that many apps didn't know what to do
with that button, and when they stopped relying on physical buttons, instead
of trying to make things more consistent, they simply threw it the towel and
removed the button. The hamburger menu replaced it. But unlike the physical
button, it can be anywhere, or absent, or hidden behind a swipe gesture, or
whatever the "UX designer" thought of.

Normally, the way you do it in a desktop app is to use the OS provided menu
bar, preferably with standard labels like "File", "Edit", "View" and "Help".
But in a web page, you can't do that, the menu bar is property of the browser,
and because HTML never standardized menus, you take inspiration from where you
can, and already messy mobile apps is the closest thing you have.

The problem is that now, people design their desktop apps like web pages, in
fact, with Electron and the like, they _are_ web pages. So every OS convention
and standard widgets that help make things consistent go out of the window
(pun not intended).

~~~
icebraining
I think Google - which is at core a web company - couldn't consider mobile
apps alone. By having an hardware button, apps and websites inevitably worked
differently. Removing the button allowed for uniformity: everyone uses the
hamburger.

------
ggcdn
Ha, well done. I really enjoyed Ash Kyd's site.

[https://ash.ms/](https://ash.ms/)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
That's fun!

It'd be cool if it randomly BSOD'ed.

~~~
duncan-donuts
That’d be a good 500 page!

------
neilv
The first time I saw a GUI desktop (Win95-like) in a Web browser, it was done
by one of the prominent kernel developers. Either a proof of concept, or a
hack for fun, or both.

It was especially impressive, because this was when Web developers were mostly
concerned with things like rounding corners of rectangles in layouts. Then
some non-Web person is passing by, and says, hey, y'know, it looks like one
thing you could do with this now is... :)

~~~
mpfundstein
you know the tale of the 10x dev? he likely was one of them :-)

------
neuromute
I started work on one of these a couple of years back. Never actually finished
it (is anything ever truly finished?!). It’s got a media player with milkdrop
visualiser (you can control the presets with left and right on the keyboard),
a terminal (with matrix effect via the command with the same name), various
settings and apps. I had a drum machine in there, but removed it because it
was a bit messy code-wise. Wanna get some emulators in there, my previous site
had an awesome JS NES emulator virtual arcade easter egg that was triggered
via the Konami code. This web OS experiment is built in jQuery, but I’m
inclined to port it over to Vue at some point.

Link, for those that are interested:
[https://os.virusav.com](https://os.virusav.com)

Note: the name VirusAV might seem ominous, but it stands for Virus
AudioVisual. I’m a coder, VJ, DJ and music producer.

~~~
syx
great work, hope to see it finished one day, I really like the transparent UI

~~~
neuromute
Thanks, I'm now motivated to work some more on it!

Likewise, your site is looking pretty sweet too.

------
zcaceres
Love this collection! I'm the creator of [https://zach.dev](https://zach.dev)

Thanks a lot for putting it in on this list!

~~~
syx
Hi Zach, really loved the scanline effect and the ambient music of your
website!

~~~
zcaceres
Thanks a lot :-)

------
iforgotmypass
Fascinated and feeling surreal, that I was able to load Doom and check it out
on my phone's web browser in
[https://www.windows93.net/](https://www.windows93.net/).

~~~
wenc
Wow, there's so much stuff in the Dosbox emulator. I fired up Turbo C for the
first time since 1990! (the compiler didn't work at first though -- had to
change the INCLUDE directory settings)

And GW-BASIC!

10 PRINT "Hello World"

END

RUN

------
Anon4Now
Reminds me of an app I saw in the late 90's developed with Delphi. I never
used Delphi, but apparently it had the ability to compile an app to an ActiveX
plug-in and run a full desktop-like application in Internet Explorer. Of
course, ActiveX had major security problems, but the UX was amazing.

~~~
noir_lord
I was a heavy Delphi user back in the day (late-90's/early 2000's) it was way
ahead of the curve in terms of RAD that didn't gimp you as a developer.

Shame they decided to go for the large enterprise insanely expensive end of
the market, if they'd done a decent commercial version for a 10th the price
they'd have done much better.

Though the writing was on the wall as the cost of development tools trended
towards zero - JetBrains have continued to prove that if you provide enough
utility competing against free can be profitable.

------
sbmthakur
Many webdevs have used systems like those for their development work. Today,
the web can nicely represent them right in the browser. This makes it quite
easy for the new generations of devs to take a feel of those systems. Feels
like the Web is giving something back. Thanks for sharing!

------
boreq
[https://glenda.0x46.net/](https://glenda.0x46.net/) Website resembling the
Plan 9's rio desktop environment.

------
hiisukun
Thanks for the excellent link. I enjoyed the site, and the fun little easter
egg for removing the 'bugs'.

I was browsing on a very low powered device, so some of it took quite some
time to load.. just to emulate things that would have run on a device 10% as
powerful as this! How ironic.

~~~
hliyan
How were loading times after the initial loadup? I found almost every one of
these (especially this [https://ash.ms/](https://ash.ms/)) be extremely fast
compared to 'modern' websites. I'm wondering why more websites can't do
whatever it is they're doing to load things fast.

------
dmix
This one put some serious effort into it with a drum machine, game, meme
creator, pdf viewer', etc. Mostly just as a resume for the creator:

[http://eeerik.com/](http://eeerik.com/)

------
faebi
It's a lot worse when you have to use corporate software who implements a
windows manager inside a browser window.

~~~
iso8859-1
Could it be Ext.js?
[https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.2.0/examples/classic/des...](https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.2.0/examples/classic/desktop/)

------
mortenjorck
The choice of the Windows 9x “My Computer” iconography for the sites is nice
and appropriate, but there’s one thing missing. It just feels like they should
require a double-click to launch!

------
app4soft
> _You 're currently viewing the No-JavaScript version of the site, what a
> boring life you must live!_

Just has a simple rule: open any unknown website with JavaScript disabled.
Permanently.

~~~
TehShrike
Personally, I was really impressed by the level of attention given to the no-
JS version!

------
borisandcrispin
This list is amazing! I designed
[http://therestartpage.com](http://therestartpage.com), thank you for
including it as well!

~~~
syx
thanks for making it, I was amazed the first time I played with each one of
it!

------
xellisx
[https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386](https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386)

~~~
kristopolous
Thanks. My most recent one took quite a long time. I'm going to be
distributing floppy disks with it soon as a fundraiser

I'm curious though: Would people be interested in tossing $5 or $10 my way for
a custom labeled vintage 3.5 floppy, with my software on it, made to look like
the early 90s, shipped to them? It's more of a novelty artpiece, I realize it,
but I have a box of old floppies, a couple drives, a bunch of packaging
material, and a color laser printer, I can put them to work (the floppies will
be from this viral image I made about 9 years ago, went viral on its own,
don't ask me about the secrets, I do not know them:
[https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-
static/static/enhanced/web...](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-
static/static/enhanced/web04/2012/9/18/11/enhanced-
buzz-16660-1347982566-7.jpg)) I probably have the original somewhere, probably
on that same drive with those couple hundred bitcoins I tossed.

Anyway, I'm about to make maybe 10 of these floppies as a test run (and I'll
put some surprises on the disk as well) but if nobody wants to toss the cash
my way then I probably shouldn't bother.

I'll have to buy the labels, get glabel to have the right parameters,
carefully affix the labels and test the disks, make the "marketing" material
... it's not a zero cost or low time operation.

This is silly, I should just do it. Who cares if I don't sell them ... my
highest profit aspirations here are like < $500 ... it's silly worthless
pocket change, I'm just looking for excuses to be lazy. Ok, I'm stating it
publicly, I'll do it.

~~~
xellisx
I'd get in touch with people such as LGR, Retro Man Cave, 8bit Guy and such.

------
thelittleone
I wonder if I am alone in feeling that we have gone backwards with UI. 98.js
as an example is beautifully simple compared to Windows 10.

~~~
zaptidizap
We are not alone

------
livre
I found an interesting Easter egg on that website. Hide the window using the
up triangle and touch or click the face of the agent.

~~~
syx
try pressing CTRL+C :)

~~~
livre
Nice one, a Linux Botnet edition. I can't see it very well because I'm using a
phone, I'll try it again later on a computer.

------
pdxandi
I have nothing to add to this conversation other than to say how much I love
each of these. It really takes me back to a time when I fell in love with
computers, and how much endless exploration and excitement they represented.
Thank you sharing this – it's nice to remember those feelings.

------
mwexler
I miss the rise (and fall) of desktop.com (which is coming back under a new
owner; some ideas never go away). See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop.com)
for more. Katie Mitic and the Drebes had a vision for client-computing that
was really fun, but browsers and the market just weren't there.

It's kind of funny: the iPhone was lauded for being skeumorphic and then that
faded away. Desktop guis also went through this, at one end becoming Microsoft
Home, and the other end being, well, pick your favorite Linux desktop ( 8-) ).

Is this a new wave, only instead of reflecting the physical world (why is the
save button still a 3.5" floppy?), now it reflects a desktop gui?

------
lnyan
It reminds me of these two CSS libraries

[https://jdan.github.io/98.css/](https://jdan.github.io/98.css/)

[https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/](https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/)

------
robomartin
It's neat to see themes reminiscent of Irix and Solaris as well.

The vast majority of people have only been exposed to Windows and Mac
graphical operating systems and might not realize that lots of these ideas had
roots in not-so-personal computers.

------
nicoburns
[http://www.therestartpage.com/](http://www.therestartpage.com/) full screened
would make a good prank. The Windows XP startup sound invoked a surprisingly
strong reaction from me.

~~~
borisandcrispin
Did this many times. :)

------
coding123
I'm curious about the tech in some of these. Probably a mix of straight up
HTML reinterpretation, probably some web assembly, feels like at least one or
two are running a full win9x dist in either docker or something...

~~~
acwan93
There's some frameworks that are available for old Windows desktop apps to run
in the browser. It's main use is for old ERP systems that were originally
written for on-premise to be deployed in the cloud and browser based without
needing to essentially rewrite everything.

The one tech stack I know of that does this is IBM Websphere for Java apps
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WebSphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_WebSphere)).
One that isn't as smooth as the site in OP is Microsoft's Remote Desktop
Service.

------
paultopia
I tried to make my personal website[1] look like an old PalmPilot --- but the
look didn't completely translate, especially on the desktop. Alas.

[1] [https://gowder.io](https://gowder.io)

~~~
rahimnathwani
I love this. It reminds me of riding the London Underground, reading Wired
articles in the AvantGo app on my Palm V.

~~~
paultopia
Thanks! That brought a huge smile to my face. I was a total Palm nerd back in
the late 90's; I remember buying a gigantic clip-on cellular modem for one to
get email on it.

------
harlanji
Someone should load up a copy of Soashable. I ran it as recently as 2017
against the current Prosody, just enable BOSH and I think legacy auth (xmpp).
The copy on SourceForge can be massaged to run with just the obnoxious browser
detection check disabled as it fails in new browsers—an otherwine great 1.0,
if I say so as the author a decade later. Xmpp4js that it usess also works in
JS Core, as it has its own everything down to DOM. If I can get around to it
I’ll try to get it up and submit it, but am homeless with barely functional IT
and web access right now.

------
1000hz
ahhh this whole thing is so great! psyched to see something of mine included
in this list (Minesweeper / winmine-exe.now.sh) among all these other awesome
works. thanks for putting this together!

~~~
valtism
I didn't get to check many out before the guilt of procrastination swept over
me, but yours definitely stood out. Love the simplicity and fidelity of it.

------
danans
Is there a case anyone can think of (other than backward compatibility with
legacy workflows and expectations) that one would write a _new_ browser app
with an old desktop OS look and feel?

That is, are there use cases that a classic OS's GUI excels at more than the
typical web or mobile/tablet app GUI, that we have lost due to the typical
style and behavior of the latter types of apps? I mean both the interaction
model of the windows and menus themselves, and also the look and behavior of
elements used to render content.

~~~
zaptidizap
Populating your own menus on c64 and using them with F keys allowed 900+ apm
navigation.

------
itomato
A few years ago, I made one that looks like NeXTStep:
[https://github.com/juddy/nextsite](https://github.com/juddy/nextsite)

------
melkael
Made one a few times ago, it was a lot of fun to do. Not really up to date but
still fun. Shameless plug : [https://elkael.com](https://elkael.com)

------
symlinkk
What's funny is web development has surpassed desktop development so much that
it's easier to make websites that look like desktop apps than making actual
desktop apps.

------
jl6
Does anybody remember the old desktop.com, circa 1999? It felt like it had a
lot of promise, but thinking about it now I can’t recall why.

------
entropie
The details are incredible. Really nicely done.

------
mattnguyen
Here’s another project that has a win93 feel:
[https://curve.fi](https://curve.fi)

They open sourced the UI here: [https://github.com/curvefi/curve-
ui](https://github.com/curvefi/curve-ui)

------
catpolice
Related: I made
[https://j-s-n.github.io/WebBS/index.html#splash](https://j-s-n.github.io/WebBS/index.html#splash)
which is designed to look like an MSDOS era GUI application

------
Ace__
Thanks for sharing this, much appreciated. It will take some time to go
through them all, but at the moment, Ash Kyd and Webamp stand out.

I was actually checking out Winamp a few days ago, as I was reminiscing about
Geiss and Milkdrop.

------
LockAndLol
I was kind of expecting Qt for Webassembly to be listed there.
[https://www.qt.io/qt-examples-for-webassembly](https://www.qt.io/qt-examples-
for-webassembly)

------
peterburkimsher
The Chinese QQ website had a similar desktop style back in the day! I was
quite impressed by it, the windows could be dragged around too.

I wish I could see more classic Mac OS style sites; the platinum interface
really appealed to me.

------
tyingq
My favorite shared tk example:
[http://tkfp.sourceforge.net/images/progress_notes3.jpg](http://tkfp.sourceforge.net/images/progress_notes3.jpg)

------
grawprog
For some reason i was reading something on the CERN website a few days ago and
while noticing the layout was odd, it never really clicked it was modelled
after a desktop GUI. That's pretty cool though.

------
phtt
I found a "modern" desktop website:

[https://github.com/kalcaddle/KodExplorer](https://github.com/kalcaddle/KodExplorer)

------
jccooper
So which of these has a good framework I can use for making a (fairly acurate-
ish) fake desktop? I've looked at quite a few in the past, and haven't seen a
good option yet.

------
gauravphoenix
[https://www.windows93.net](https://www.windows93.net) is quite fun! I opened
a terminal and typed reboot. Voila! it did reboot

------
bosky101
Relevant => css library that resembles mac desktop apps =>
[https://photonkit.com](https://photonkit.com)

------
wener
[https://github.com/os-js/OS.js](https://github.com/os-js/OS.js) JavaScript
Web Desktop Platform

------
29athrowaway
Windows RG

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbEYOaO9kp4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbEYOaO9kp4)

------
rajbiswas125
This is the coolest thing I have found on HN even

------
lazyjones
Currently a bit broken: [http://www.atari.st](http://www.atari.st)

------
atum47
hey, thank you for adding me to your list.

made me happy =)

------
tarsinge
Nice to see Poolside FM with some Classic MacOS vibe instead of the common
Win9x variations.

~~~
jw1224
Agreed, I really liked this one. Though if you right-click and choose ""Format
C:\>", it does give you a Blue Screen Of Death :)

------
SoulMan
Weird, I openedthe terminal app in Windows 93 and it recognizes ls instead of
dir

------
jasoneckert
I love this. This is exactly the type of creativity that makes the Web fun!

------
keosariel
it has a little of retro look and feel. Nice job

------
vyl
Adding mine to the mix: www.vyl.app

------
pgnas
This is fantastic!

------
ajsharp
This is amazing.

------
Moxdi
i need a distro that looks like this

~~~
bitwize
fvwm95 is still a thing.

~~~
iso8859-1
No, it is abandoned. But there are some bugfixes at
[https://flaterco.com/util/index.html](https://flaterco.com/util/index.html)

------
codecamper
is this done in webassembly?

------
kkarty
so nostalgic

------
chrismorgan
A major accessibility problem with this: the list uses <div>s with click
handlers, rather than links. This makes it not respond properly to clicks with
modifiers (e.g. Ctrl+click), not have the right context menu options, not show
the href in the status bar, and be _completely_ unusable to users of tools
like screen readers or those that would navigate by keyboard.

Never _ever_ do this. If it opens a new page, it’s a link. <div> with a click
handler is the wrong thing >99.99% of the time: it should be a link or a
button.

~~~
linkmotif
Accessibility is super important, but gosh your comment here is downright
horrible.

It's neither not constructive, nor friendly. Nothing about the contents of the
page itself. You're basically, rude and borderline hostile with italics
emphasizing something the author /should not/ do. Horrible.

Where's your #1 Hacker News site? Where's your awesome collection of awesome
sites that you shared with people. I don't see one.

~~~
HereBeBeasties
I found it concise, well-explained, informative and helpful. Hopefully many
other people learned something useful from it. The author of the original site
certainly got value from it given their reply. You don't always have to sugar
coat code review feedback with a meaningless "This is awesome but..." \- it's
usually disingenuous at best. Surely as hackers we should all appreciate good,
useful feedback like this?

