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Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

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Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#191

Post by toast0 »

ubermonkey wrote: post #150
vilius wrote: post #73

In early UI we can see a Wastebasket, which ended up being changed to the Recycle Bin. As a user I would say that Recycle Bin is a misleading name because it has nothing to do with recycling a file / folder. However it has a more positive sounding than the weird Wastebasket. Meanwhile classic Mac OS already had a Trash. Simple, clear and short. I wonder why Windows could not simply name it Trash? Could it be that the…

I have to think that the common anti-pattern of naive users storing files they mean to keep in the Recycle Bin wouldn't happen so often if it were still called Trash.

This is a common user behavior on Macs as well. It's an easy place to put things and find them later (as long as nobody helpfully cleans the bin in the interim)

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#192

Post by keithpeter »

louthy wrote: post #24

> Our testing data told us that the main problem was windows not being visible at all times, so users couldn’t see what they had open or access tasks quickly. This realization led us fairly quickly to the task bar design Hmm, I wonder if that should be reworded to “and then we saw RISC OS and it had a task bar design that we really liked”. I can’t believe that they wouldn’t have known about it.

Yup - I remember that Windows PCs at work became far easier to use after Windows 95 (actually 98 I think) reached them as I was using an Archimedes at home.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#193

Post by nsriv »

torstenvl wrote: post #188
blattimwind wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Windows' file open/save dialogues are so far ahead of everything else that the competition seems like unusable garbage to me. I'm glad KDE/Qt chose to emulate these very closely on Linux. Wouldn't want a desktop where my only choice is Gnome's take at this. (On the flip side, Windows' select-a-directory dialogue of the same vintage is such an utter piece of garbage that I can't imagine there being any ove…

Windows (Word) workflow: - Click the FILE tab - Wait two full seconds while it replaces my screen with something else - Click Save As - Click Computer (because Microsoft wants you to do everything in the cloud) - Click Browse - Finally proceed to saving your document like you would be able to do immediately on any other system

To remedy this: File > Options > Save >Save to Computer by Default (yes, agreed that this is ridiculous).

A habit that I've developed from earliest computer classes in elementary school is to save the file in the location you want as soon as it's named, so ever after Ctrl+S saves it with no hassle.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#195

Post by z3t4 »

Klathmon wrote: post #71
wiradikusuma wrote: post #4

"not understanding how folders could exist inside of other folders" -- My mom is 70 years old now, and I easily get frustrated whenever she's stuck with seemingly simple tasks with her computer. I usually scold her and yell at her, "This is so obvious, how come you don't know?" -- I always regret doing that afterwards. After I'm calm, I ask her why, trying to understand it from her perspective. Every time I do this,…

>So, whenever I design UI/UX for an app, I ask my mom to test. I have an informal rule that I will try to get someone at my job that has never seen or used the application to be the one to test out new features or UI changes. Generally just asking when they have some time, handing them a phone or laptop, and asking them to do a task in the app (with a small amount of background about the task if needed). There has ne…

Don't forget about repeated use. Do your users come back, or do they use the app only once !?

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#196

Post by rahoulb »

ubermonkey wrote: post #139
rahoulb wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSX Finder is horrible. Classic MacOS Finder was far better - but still had open/save dialogs. RiscOS had it right - the Open dialog didn't exist - you would open the folder and double-click the file. And the Save dialog didn't exist - the document would reduce to an icon which you would then place into the correct folder. (You can sort of do this on the various versions of macOS by dragging the icon from the title b…

What do you find horrible? I prefer it by a wide margin over Windows Explorer.

I prefer it over Windows Explorer. I prefer the Classic Mac Finder to both.

This article from 2003 lists the problems with the OSX Finder. Since it was written, it's only got worse.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#197

Post by rahoulb »

smashingfiasco wrote: post #173
rahoulb wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSX Finder is horrible. Classic MacOS Finder was far better - but still had open/save dialogs. RiscOS had it right - the Open dialog didn't exist - you would open the folder and double-click the file. And the Save dialog didn't exist - the document would reduce to an icon which you would then place into the correct folder. (You can sort of do this on the various versions of macOS by dragging the icon from the title b…

You could always replace your usage of the modern macOS Finder with my poor and very incomplete clone of the classic Mac Finder. :) https://classicmacfinder.com

Amazing

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#198

Post by jandrese »

eadmund wrote: post #152
russellbeattie wrote: post #26

It's hard to remember, but even though Windows 3.11 was extremely dominant at the time, it was by no means assured that Windows 95 would be the success that it was. The very first version missed wildly in some big ways (MSN was a folder integrated into the desktop, for example, and no TCP/IP support [*Edit: yes there was - I misremembered.]), but the core, underlying redesign of the GUI was so profoundly good it prop…

> Compare it to other GUIs at the time, like CDE, IBM's Presentation Manager, or even Mac OS 8 and there's no comparison. Well, I agree that there was no comparison with System 8, but not in the sense you mean. I think that the Mac back then was head-and-shoulders a better system than Windows. It might still be, but they're both so painful to use now that it's very difficult to pick a winner. The Macintosh system was…

Windows 95 was no paragon of stability when you started loading it up with tray apps and running big nasty applications or trying to use the damn printer with its piece of shit driver. We are spoiled these days by how stable our computers are.

I agree with you that keeping the file metadata in a separate fork is far superior to keeping the file metadata in a three character extension, but sadly the world zagged on this one when Apple zigged. I especially like that you could have two files of the same type associated with different applications, so if you created a text file in your IDE it would open back up in that IDE instead of launching the word processor. And you could change it (somewhat clunkily) at will.

Win95 did have some advantages though. The Start Menu was a better organization system than Apple's Application folder for example. Macs of that era were also slow and badly overpriced.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#199

Post by hungerstrike »

eadmund wrote: post #152
russellbeattie wrote: post #26

It's hard to remember, but even though Windows 3.11 was extremely dominant at the time, it was by no means assured that Windows 95 would be the success that it was. The very first version missed wildly in some big ways (MSN was a folder integrated into the desktop, for example, and no TCP/IP support [*Edit: yes there was - I misremembered.]), but the core, underlying redesign of the GUI was so profoundly good it prop…

> Compare it to other GUIs at the time, like CDE, IBM's Presentation Manager, or even Mac OS 8 and there's no comparison. Well, I agree that there was no comparison with System 8, but not in the sense you mean. I think that the Mac back then was head-and-shoulders a better system than Windows. It might still be, but they're both so painful to use now that it's very difficult to pick a winner. The Macintosh system was…

Windows has always been head-and-shoulders above the Mac and that's why it won the 90s desktop wars and that's why just about every business on earth uses Windows and not Macs.

You are in a tiny minority if you think Mac window and file management are any good. File extensions are the most pragmatic way of dealing with associations and that just about sums up the difference between Mac and Windows: Microsoft made Windows to be practical whereas Apple has always focused on style above all else.

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