
98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs - bennettfeely
https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
======
JansjoFromIkea
Hey man, if you're looking for the fonts I had them on a similar thing I done
a while ago. Only normal size unfortunately
[https://github.com/padraigfl/packard-
belle/tree/master/src/_...](https://github.com/padraigfl/packard-
belle/tree/master/src/_scss/w98/fonts) Cant remember where I sourced them from
but it's probably in the code somewhere, the MSSansSerif ones are pixel
perfect as far as I'm aware. It outputted CSS to be used independently but it
was very much a secondary concern, pretty sure I'd be the only person who
knows how to use it without backtracking from the react bits
[https://github.com/padraigfl/packard-
belle/blob/master/css/w...](https://github.com/padraigfl/packard-
belle/blob/master/css/w98_simple.css) the data-uris might be useful, will have
a look through your issues to see if I can help with anything!

Here's the attempt at a Windows 98 recreation I done with it feel free to take
whatever from it:

[http://packard-belle.netlify.app/](http://packard-belle.netlify.app/)

Tried doing a design system thing too but got lazy:

[http://packard-belle.herokuapp.com/](http://packard-belle.herokuapp.com/)

~~~
prezjordan
Beautiful work, thanks so much :) I'll keep poking at fonts and see what I can
learn
[https://github.com/jdan/98.css/issues/10](https://github.com/jdan/98.css/issues/10)

I _love_ that we arrived at the ~same solution using inset shadows for the
buttons. Makes me feel validated.

~~~
JansjoFromIkea
genuinely was the whole reason I wound up doing it tbh!

Will take the font discussion over there

------
tomxor
I can't believe how intensely functional the UI design of windows 95/98 was
when looking back, and I say this as someone who intensely hates windows
overall - but credit where it's due.

Only when using it now is it clear how well they minimized ambiguity and
cognitive load... everything is so frickin obvious. Contrast that with modern
aesthetically obsessed UIs, ever ambiguous, lack of clear distinctions not in
both spatial boundaries and UI states - it's a constant guessing game for the
user, never certain about the outcome of an interaction, giving you this
distracting sense of unease rather than just focusing on whats behind the UI.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I don't get it when people people use strong descriptors like "unease" and
"jarring" when describing UIs. I don't think I've ever had a UI that made me
feel fearful for my life/psychological well-being like that.

~~~
tomxor
It's subconscious, if you don't try to notice you wont, instead you will just
stop using things or dislike using things without knowing why specifically -
or more subtle still, you will not be as efficient in those programs... The UI
is inbetween what you are trying to interact with, so if it doesn't quite work
right then the emotions are going to be more subtle and hard to differentiate
because it's not your main focus.

You are more likely to intuitively get this once you have some experience
attempting to design effective UIs (and actually trying to care about it).

------
atum47
that's really gorgeous. I find windows 95 aesthetics a master piece. I'm not
gonna lie, I thought about windows 95 when I was creating FOS, my Fake
Operational System "framework".

I'm thinking about refactoring it and I'll may incorporate windows color
scheme to it. Here's the link if you wanna see what I am talking about.

[https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fos](https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fos)

~~~
cm2187
Fashion is cyclical. At one point people will get bored of these ambiguous
modern UI with hidden fields and gestures, and made of 50 shades of light grey
that only a calibrated display can render with any discernable contrast. And
we will rediscover the merit of clear and explicit UIs, and Apple will claim
it just invented it!

~~~
schrijver
I wouldn’t be surprised :) The Windows 95 aesthetic is already back into
fashion, I see it a lot on flyers, web art… just not yet in computer
applications! I guess that’s a matter of time. Check out the flyer for this
party: [https://highclouds.org/highclouds-online-antivirus-party-
mag...](https://highclouds.org/highclouds-online-antivirus-party-magdalena-
bay-cobrah-dolly-bing-bing/)

They used vectors, looks like the Windows 95 aesthetics that was so connected
to pixel survives this transition quite well!

~~~
squiggleblaz
That's later than Windows 95 - maybe 98 or 2000. Windows 95 didn't support
gradient titlebars.

~~~
xattt
Gradient titlebars were the killer feature for Windows 98.

------
larschdk
The widgets look spot on, but the text has atrocious kerning. 'ti', 'll', 'd!'
are squashed together. Windows 95++ had extremely good small size font
rendering and did pixel perfect alignment and kerning of pretty much any font
(However, the UI font was probably bitmapped). Remove the 'letter-spacing'
styling - it breaks kerning.

------
prezjordan
Author here! Thanks for all the nice comments (and helpful bug reports). This
idea has been in the back of my mind for ~2 years now but I recently got a
wave of motivation and decided to ride it - and here we are. Happy to answer
any Qs :)

~~~
fermienrico
I think the Text input field doesn’t match the rest.

~~~
andai
On iOS text and textarea are rounded. Not sure if you can override that with
css.

~~~
efreak
You can get around that with contentEditable, but that creates an even bigger
mess.

------
kuschku
I’m impressed by how few people here have tested it in Firefox – Fieldset is
broken, Button has ::-moz-focus-inner not properly disabled, Radio/Option
isn’t rendering correctly (still shows the original input element as 2x2px
black box), and quite a bit more.

Hilariously, this is quite a good example on why the Chrome monoculture is
just repeating the IE monoculture of years past

~~~
prezjordan
I’ve been getting a good amount of bug reports from FF users, and am grateful
because - you are right - I did not test in it and should have.

I’m tracking the fieldset and inner-focus ones (though unable to repro the
latter on my machine). The third is new to me if you’d be so kind as to share
some details about your system.

~~~
kuschku
I’m running Firefox 75 on Ubuntu 18.04. Pretty standard usage.

Fieldset doesn’t allow inset box-shadows on Firefox, but you can fix that
relatively easy:

    
    
        fieldset {
          position: relative;
        }
    
        fieldset::before  {
          content: "";
          display: block;
          position: absolute;
          top: 0;
          left: 0;
          right: 0;
          bottom: 0;
          box-shadow: inset -1px -1px #ffffff, inset 1px 1px #0a0a0a, inset -2px -2px #808080, inset 2px 2px #dfdfdf;
        }
    
    

Moz-Inner-Focus and the Radio/Options are also equally easily fixed:

    
    
        ::-moz-focus-inner {
          border: 0;
        }
    
        input[type="radio"], input[type="checkbox"] {
          visibility: hidden;
        }

------
airstrike
We've come full circle. Thank you for this. It's so simple it's actually
_peaceful_

~~~
sedatk
We’ve also come full circle because this was pretty much the browser’s default
style on Netscape.

------
zozbot234
Isn't it a bit ridiculous that we need to do this in the first place?
Shouldn't clear 3D controls on a neutral gray background be the _default_
user-agent appearance, with no need for custom CSS of any sort?

~~~
zapzupnz
Considering non-formatted HTML files are supposed to be documents, not
windows, no?

Adding to this: without any specification, the browser should, and does, use
the operating system's native controls when rendering controls such as
<button>.

~~~
the_pwner224
Not anymore for chrome & edge

[https://blog.chromium.org/2020/03/updates-to-form-
controls-a...](https://blog.chromium.org/2020/03/updates-to-form-controls-and-
focus.html)

All part of Google's master plan to commoditize desktop OSs. Everyone outside
the US already uses Android, soon your computer will be a Chrome box instead
of a Windows/Mac/Linux box.

First they did the browser title bar & tab bar integration/styling & removed
the normal OS title bar, then they made Chrome OS, now they are removing the
last traces of OS-specific styling for those who haven't already switched to
Chrome OS.

And Gmail, Gdocs, and Chromebooks are _huge_ in kids schools. The kids don't
know anything outside the non-Google universe. Most of the kids I know think
MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint are lame (not that I'm a fan, but you have to admit
MS Office is unrivaled in its abilities).

20 years from now they will have a gigantic monopoly over a huge range of
computing.

~~~
Thorentis
I ... have no issue with those Chromium changes. I don't want Google to
control the web, but I certainly wish there more standards based work went
into designing a set of controls that was default across all browsers that was
coherent, consistent, and was a safe default if you didn't want a theme.
Sadly, Bootstrap become this a while ago, followed by a plethora of other web
"defaults" that you just plunk into the top of your HTML file to get a whole
new design without changing much.

I'm hoping Firefox Foundation or something like that will do some work in this
area.

~~~
the_pwner224
That's an interesting perspective. I guess for those of us on Mac and some
Linux-ish OSs, we expect things to just work and look standard. I don't use
mac but I think most users are accustomed to applications fitting in with the
system, and Apple seems to make a big deal on both macOS and their mobile OSs
about this. This is also true on the Gnome desktop where every single Gnome
really looks and feels like a Gnome application - it's very coherent, and
though I am not a fan of Gnome, I really enjoyed that part of the experience
when I used it recently. On KDE this is also true, where every single
application, whether Qt or GTK, looks like it's made from the same components.

And I think that web applications should be like this. They may be delivered
differently, but they should be part of the system like everything else.
Making the UI elements look like the OS ones is good.

I especially notice it on KDE, since on the default KDE theme the checkboxes
and radiobuttons and scrollbars look a bit different from most other OSs and
the Gnome default theme. But in the browser my checkboxes and radiobuttons and
dropdowns look exactly like every other checkbox and radiobutton and dropdown
on my computer, and the scrollbars have the distinctive KDE look too.

Most web apps do behave differently from normal applications, and also have
stupid company-specific theming, but it's nice having at least parts of them
fit in.

I suspect those who come from a Windows background will not have the same
opinion, because on Windows basically every app is a mess of different themes
and window decorations.

~~~
Thorentis
Windows has only been like that recently. The 9x days, and even a good chunk
of the XP days meant standard looking applications.

Now that CSS and Javascript are so widely used, it would be interesting for OS
vendors to provide a default OS theme along with their packaged browser, that
allowed some kind of sane default for web applications to use. You could use a
native skin, or load your own CSS to customise it. Microsoft kind of tried
this with ActiveX controls, and then Java Applets tried it, and then Flash was
fun by ultimately not a good idea, and now we're here with thousands of themes
to choose from and a rough set of guidelines that some follow and many don't.

~~~
squiggleblaz
It's funny, back in the day it was "It will never be the year of Linux on the
desktop until all applications look consistent". People hated the fact that
this app was Gtk, that one was Qt and this one here was Motif. But on Windows,
it was winapi button windows and common controls all the way (except a few MS
apps like Encarta - leading the way in modern flat guis already back in the
Windows 3.1 days). The world has turned so far around!

------
irrational
I was going to post the quote about them not stopping to think if they should,
but then I actually clicked the link. Wow, that brought back a lot of
nostalgia. I haven't even used Windows in 15+ years, but I now realize that I
still have a fondness for the interface of my youth ;-)

~~~
skissane
I might be a few years older than you – I get far stronger nostalgic feelings
from Windows 3.x UI than that of Windows 9x.

~~~
Minor49er
You're in luck:
[https://codepen.io/matthijss/pen/wzYjJQ](https://codepen.io/matthijss/pen/wzYjJQ)

~~~
squiggleblaz
Haha. I was just thinking of that. Been wondering if there's any operating
system I can theme to look like Win3.1 any more - the aesthetic of Windows 95
is better but Windows 3.1 seems to fit our contemporary standards of flat and
fewer colors better. I did like the more rounded buttons of Windows 3.1 better
than the harsher edges of the Windows 95 buttons.

The mistakes a driving me crazy. I assume the fonts are just issues with me
not having the right font installed. The command menu should be flat and the
bar in it should be longer, rectangular and with a drop shadow. The
minimize/maximize buttons don't look at all right (no highlight, too
stretched). When you move the window, the frame looks wrong - i think the
grains are too big and widely separated.

~~~
anthk
Linux + XFCE has a Win 3.1 theme on b00merang's site. Borrow the icons from
the Chicago95 theme and you are done.

~~~
sdegutis
Oh man, Chicago95 is almost enough to make me try out Desktop Linux again.

------
slobotron
Certainly evokes a lot of nostalgia. The tactile feel of 3D buttons can be
mesmerizing at times, a lot of experience has been lost in the race to flat,
in addition to lowered affordability of modern UIs.

One bug: Firefox on Linux introduces an extra dotted rectangle on focused
buttons (so they end up with two oddly overlapping focus indicators)

~~~
chrismorgan
I’m observing this extra outline on Firefox Nightly on Windows. I can’t
discern what’s making it, and suspect it may be a Firefox bug, somehow.

~~~
Izkata
It's literally a feature, not a bug:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/::-moz-
focu...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/::-moz-focus-inner)

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71074/how-to-remove-
fire...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/71074/how-to-remove-firefoxs-
dotted-outline-on-buttons-as-well-as-links)

~~~
chrismorgan
Ah yes, I had completely forgotten about ::-moz-focus-inner.

------
jhbadger
Are there similar retro-UI systems for other older interfaces? While I don't
have that much nostalgia for Win98 myself, I could see how it could be cute to
have similar systems for classic (System 6-7) Mac, Amiga, etc. I've seen
websites that try to go for these looks, but I think they were manually done.

~~~
karateka
I've noticed there are a couple of these now so I threw a quick list up on
Github: [https://github.com/matt-auckland/retro-css](https://github.com/matt-
auckland/retro-css)

~~~
ZenPsycho
i found this too, (but i can’t find a demo page) [https://github.com/npjg/new-
dawn](https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn)

~~~
lioeters
That one was a bit disappointing - here's a screenshot:
[https://imgur.com/oFz7e0p](https://imgur.com/oFz7e0p)

Funny enough, just yesterday (before seeing this post), I was searching for
re-creations of the Macintosh interface.

Here's the best one I could find:

Apple Macintosh System 7 UI in CSS -
[https://github.com/pfcode/system7css](https://github.com/pfcode/system7css)
(Screenshot: [https://imgur.com/ZEKolbS](https://imgur.com/ZEKolbS))

Aah, that nostalgic comfort.. Makes me dream of building my next toy "OS in a
browser" from this.

~~~
ZenPsycho
What would be nice is if there was something like a standard test or demo set
of HTML for all these to work against, which would enable a way to switch
themes.

------
jannes
I noticed that it's using box-shadow for the "3d effect" on buttons and window
borders.

I'm a bit disappointed they didn't use the "inset" or "outset" border-style
[0] which pretty nobody uses anymore these days. I thought this kind of design
is pretty much why these border-styles exist.

[0]: [https://htmldog.com/references/css/properties/border-
style/](https://htmldog.com/references/css/properties/border-style/)

~~~
runxel
It may be because the transition wouldn't be as smooth as it is now?

~~~
jannes
Did Windows 98 have smoooth transitions, though?

~~~
runxel
Haha, you got a point there ;)

------
enhdless
I think this would be a great reference for teaching introductory UI design;
with the 3D-ness you can clearly see the different states that each UI element
requires.

I also really like the quotes about each component! Is there an online copy of
this _Microsoft Windows User Experience_ manual somewhere?

~~~
layer8
You can borrow a (badly scanned) copy on archive.org:
[https://archive.org/details/microsoftwindows00micr_0/page/63...](https://archive.org/details/microsoftwindows00micr_0/page/630)

------
nstart
My heart beat a little faster when I saw the VB dialog box. I experienced
building software for the first time when I was taken to my father's office
where they used VB and Foxpro (and still do) to build ERP systems. Everything
looked like this site.

The waves of nostalgia are sure coming on hard. Thank you to the author of
this. This whole site is a work of art!

~~~
prezjordan
This is so wonderful to read, thank you :) 100% feel the same way which is
what kept me going to ship this.

------
chadlavi
> Today's mood

>

> Claire Saffitz

>

> Brad Leone

>

> Chris Morocco

>

> Carla Lalli Music

I just wanted to let the author know that at least one other person
appreciates this though tbh most of the time for me it's Sohla.

~~~
LandR
I think Molly is my favourite.

Although I still can't make Carbonara well to save my life.

------
Causality1
That's as refreshing as a dunk in a cold pool. My God we need more UIs that
instantly tell you what they can and cannot do. Seems like the modern ones do
as much as they can to obscure everything.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Considering how cyclical everything is I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a
return to Win95/98 style UIs soon enough. They’ll advertise it as
“revolutionising productivity with an innovative new approach to desktop
computing” and give us the a recoloured Win98.

I’d probably switch back to Windows if they did.

------
krtkush
The joy I get by clicking on those buttons cannot be expressed in words here.

~~~
phreack
The clarity of such perfectly defined buttons is unbeatable! Maybe they'd be
more amicable to modern tastes with rounded shapes or a touch of color, but
that 3d visual effect of a button being physically pushed definitely needs to
come back and never leave us again, it's so clear and pleasant!

------
severak_cz
This is great. I was actually building something similar for my VST stuff page
(work in progress -
[http://tilde.town/~severak/studio/](http://tilde.town/~severak/studio/)). Now
I am gonna copy that neat box-shadow border from 98.css.

------
TimTheTinker
Really nice!

One minor nitpick: the title bar buttons actually need to be a pixel or two
larger in each direction (so 2 or 4 pixels more of height and width, while
remaining centered).

~~~
jspash
That's the beauty of open code. You can pick all the nits you want ->
[https://github.com/jdan/98.css/issues](https://github.com/jdan/98.css/issues)
:)

------
kup0
I don't know what it is about the 95, 98, 2000 era of Windows UI and
aesthetics but I still strongly prefer it.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It was functional and clear, unlike modern "hide everything" UIs?

~~~
kup0
Very true, especially when it comes to scroll bars and similar elements. While
I do enjoy some "modern" aesthetics from time to time, the Win98 style UI just
feels far more "productive", for lack of a better term.

And as much as I like that Linux in many ways often keeps that type of UI
around, I still feel like Win98 did it better (almost can't believe I'm saying
that).

------
FpUser
Oh, those days when designers actually thought of ergonomic vs modern insanity
with no standard, no contrast, no ability to deduct function from the look
etc. etc. Well there are exceptions but generic picture looks rather
depressing.

------
imbusy111
I'm using this next time I'm building something from scratch. Thanks.

~~~
LarvaFX
Me too

------
andy_ppp
My god they have even managed to switch off the anti aliasing of fonts! Looks
so accurate I doubt I would be able to tell the difference, well done.

~~~
xattt
I can’t decide whether the aliasing is part of the aesthetic or not.

~~~
andy_ppp
I am pretty sure it’s deliberate, I mean did ‘98 have clear type yet? Did it
work?

~~~
tomcooks
[No, it started with
XP]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType#Implementations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType#Implementations))

------
thaeli
I'd really love a Macintosh System 7.1 version of this.

------
longtermd
Check out [https://poolside.fm/](https://poolside.fm/) for some extra
nostalgia Operating Systems.

------
kccqzy
The controls look great but the text looks off. I forgot the UI font in
Windows 98 but perhaps it was Tahoma. Maybe try that and disable anti-
aliasing. Better yet, get an image of how the actual font is rendered on
Windows 98 and make the glyphs into a bitmap font. That would also sidestep
all the font renderer differences between then and now.

~~~
prezjordan
I started off by bringing in MS Sans Serif from my windows 98 VM, but ditched
it since it was rendering almost identically to Arial.

Making a webfont out of the original 8pt Tahoma sounds fun, but I am unsure if
I have to do it manually. I was worried about having to provide bold glyphs,
and wasn't sure how to make it scale while still looking pixelated. (That is,
if I need to hand-draw an 8x7 lowercase 'e' do I also need to hand-draw the
24x21 version?)

Anyway, I cut it but agree I should get this right!

------
zubairq
Really nice. I tried to get Windows look and feel in the headers for the Yazz
code editor, but maybe I should have used this CSS lib instead. Great Job!

[https://yazz.com/app/homepage.html](https://yazz.com/app/homepage.html)

~~~
canada_dry
>
> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21734845](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21734845)

This (yazz/pilot [i]) needs more exposure... the webapp form designer is
gorgeous and useful.

[i] [https://yazz.com/app/homepage.html](https://yazz.com/app/homepage.html)

~~~
zubairq
Thanks, glad you like it. We haven’t really pushed it out yet as we really
want to get the debugger and App Store released before we can say it is useful

------
runawaybottle
Using this to style my online resume next time.

------
bdcravens
Nitpick: "My First VB4 Program" \- VB6 came out in 1998

~~~
2038AD
The present is made up of pieces of the past, my friend :)

------
ChrisArchitect
_Flexbox was originally invented in the late ’90s by Mozilla (using vendor
prefixes — `display: -moz-box`, `-moz-box-flex`, etc.) in order to use CSS to
style and lay out their Windows 9x app UI. We’ve come full circle._

[https://twitter.com/frankyan/status/1253063046060109824](https://twitter.com/frankyan/status/1253063046060109824)

------
davidgh
This is fantastic. I looked for a CSS library like this some years ago and
couldn’t find one. I didn’t have the courage to try to make it myself.

------
paweladamczuk
Does anyone know what the easiest way to make those windows movable and
resizable (dynamic in general) would be?

Great work, I love this interface style!

------
5-
nice attempt!

it might be useful to boot real windows 98 (e.g. by visiting
[http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98](http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98))
and check how things interact with clicks, in particular how checkboxes and
radio buttons look with mouse down.

------
joshuawithers
I’m not smart enough to get this into a Wordpress theme, but if it were ported
to WP, it’d be my personal blog theme

------
birslip
It's great, I love it! It's quite similar to this project on iOS:
[https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit](https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit)
They even went as far as building a fake Internet Explorer app.

~~~
prezjordan
Woah, amazing attention to detail there. I love that they include this image
in the README [0], buttons were the first thing that hooked me into building
this.

[0]
[https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit/raw/master/Images/pix...](https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit/raw/master/Images/pixel.png)

------
laken
Wow that's pretty fleshed out. I created something similar 3 years ago, but I
lost motivation (named it the same too haha):
[https://github.com/LakenH/98css](https://github.com/LakenH/98css)

------
CawCawCaw
Brilliant. Now for Windows XP...

~~~
prezjordan
In between thinking of this project (about 2 years ago) and now I was _so_
desperate for someone to clue me in on the gradients used to draw windows XP
window title bars. Still never found the answer.

------
kup0
It is rather amusing how this doesn't work in IE11. I'd _almost_ be inclined
to fork and make a version that does, just for the heck of it... for you know,
corporate environments that need Win98-styled intranets :)

------
mikorym
It's weird how this reminds me of the last two years of the _newest changes_
in UIs. I think it was Windows 10 that brought back minimalist borders (as
opposed to Windows 7)? I am not sure whether I am imagining this.

------
winrid
Oh yes. I can't wait to think of a product to build using this design system.

~~~
enhdless
I think it would be hilarious to use this in a desktop Electron app and come
full circle.

~~~
winrid
To top it off the bundle size and memory usage would still be more than just
running Win95 in a VM...

~~~
squiggleblaz
It would give you the authentic feeling of running Win95 on a machine that
maybe only had 8 MiB ram.

~~~
winrid
My sister had a Win95 machine with 32mb of ram and 2mb of video memory. What a
powerhouse! Played 3D games on that thing...

------
busymom0
I surprisingly like it! Only thing I didn't like is the font (makes it hard to
read for some reason) but otherwise, it looks wonderful. I might use this as
an inspiration for future project I am building!

------
teruakohatu
This is great, I would love to be able to use this. Win98 always felt like a
highpoint in easy to UI design.

I am not a CSS ninja, how easy would it be to make this responsive? The
example do not appear to be responsive.

~~~
agumonkey
I somehow enjoyed the ride to css3 and full fledged responsive multi layer dom
presentations but I do miss the wintel days GUI concept. Something about the
simplicity, clarity.. makes it more to the point than the hyper capable yet
systems of today.

------
stjohnswarts
First thing I do in Windows is turn off the eye candy :) . I mostly use linux
with KDE. It still has a real file menu and visible scrollbars and I hope that
never changes :)

------
pgug
What is the name for these simple css files that can turn plain html into a
full layout/theme?

Can I find a list of these somewhere?

~~~
worble
I don't think there's anything official or even standard for naming. Some
places refer to them as class-less:

[https://github.com/troxler/awesome-css-frameworks#class-
less](https://github.com/troxler/awesome-css-frameworks#class-less)

And these seem to be the strictly frameworks without classes.

This site refers to them as "drop-in" frameworks (and lets you test them out
live):

[https://dohliam.github.io/dropin-minimal-
css/](https://dohliam.github.io/dropin-minimal-css/)

The ones here appear to not be strictly class-less, since I know at least some
of those frameworks do have classes, but are probably optional/very light on
classes. 98.css would also be a "drop in" in this case since you can see
things like the title bar do use classes:

    
    
        <div class="title-bar">
          <div class="title-bar-text">A Title Bar</div>
          <div class="title-bar-controls">
            <button aria-label="Close"></button>
          </div>
        </div>

------
mnorvais
Looks nice, gonna try to use it some of my projects. The old Windows UI is
really functional and easy to understand

~~~
MaxBarraclough
I generally agree, but as Semiapies pointed out there's some low-contrast text
in places.

Vaguely relevant: The FOX Toolkit implements the Windows 95 look for
lightweight Linux/Windows GUI applications. [0] A pity we don't see more GUIs
like that today.

[0] [http://fox-toolkit.org/screenshots.html](http://fox-
toolkit.org/screenshots.html)

------
Semiapies
Surprising how rough on the eyes nostalgia can be, between the small font size
and low contrast colors.

------
asutekku
The checked disabled radio button and text inputs do not look right on iPhone.
Otherwise solid work!

------
taikawatiti
If the author is here, this is perfect except for 'space' not being able to
click a button

------
Hamuko
Guessing it doesn't have those fancy warning symbols that some Windows 98
dialogs had?

------
chj
It may as well be called 2000.css, at least I won't be able to tell the
difference.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Windows 2000 used Tahoma for its UI font, but 9x used MS Sans Serif.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahoma_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahoma_\(typeface\))

------
WolfOliver
I bet the css is totally broken when you open it in a Windows 98 Internet
Explorer :D

------
lmoa
Looks cool. Does it work on IE?

------
nonamenoslogan
This is very cool! Mind if I fork and re-work to look like Solaris? :D

------
Dig1t
ouch, open this in Safari and highlight some text, then unhighlight the text.
It's literally barely readable, maybe some bugs to fix there, but it looks
great in Chrome. Cool idea!

------
petters
Would be cool if it came with JS to resize, move close windows etc.

~~~
gear54rus
Only if it's easy to swap out for your own. It's unlikely the JS it would come
from would fit into they way you do things normally (in your project or even
your head).

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Does anyone know a similar project but with Windows 10 styling?

------
travbrack
For some reason this brought back memories of mIRC

