Windows 95/98/2000 and Office 95/97/2000 is in many ways my “native interface”, probably because those were the platforms I grew up using most during my late-teenager formative years in High School and in the early years of University.
I have to say that those interfaces are clunky in retrospect, but they are undeniably clear and do not place form over function as many of the modern ‘flat’ and touch-orientated interfaces seem to.
The other two graphical interfaces I remember most fondly are NeXT’s and BeOS’, which are also, probably not coincidentally, OSes I used frequently over the same period of time.
(Just to give you some context, I remember avidly reading the Windows 95 Resource Kit in the run-up to the Windows 95 release in August 1995 because I had no internet access and therefore had had no way of downloading and testing the many “Chicago” betas that everybody had been raving about... and therefore I know that radio buttons on the interface were originally intended to be diamond-shaped rather than round.)
I honestly still refer to the Windows 2000 User Experience book I found online years ago whenever we have to add a new form to our old Winforms applications. Funny thing is, back when that document was written, application skinning was all the rage and I spent considerable time masking that clunky old interface.
I agree - I'd say clean rather than clunky. The old and (by modern standards) spartan appearance of Windows 95 applications doesn't mean the UI design is no good. Similarly, command-line interfaces can be very effective, even if they lack GUI gloss.
I have to say that those interfaces are clunky in retrospect, but they are undeniably clear and do not place form over function as many of the modern ‘flat’ and touch-orientated interfaces seem to.
The other two graphical interfaces I remember most fondly are NeXT’s and BeOS’, which are also, probably not coincidentally, OSes I used frequently over the same period of time.
(Just to give you some context, I remember avidly reading the Windows 95 Resource Kit in the run-up to the Windows 95 release in August 1995 because I had no internet access and therefore had had no way of downloading and testing the many “Chicago” betas that everybody had been raving about... and therefore I know that radio buttons on the interface were originally intended to be diamond-shaped rather than round.)