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Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

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Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#261

Post by jdswain »

itomato wrote: post #189

I've often thought Windows 95 borrowed ideas from Nextstep. Looking at this retrospective, I can see how it could be possible, especially if they started design in 1992. NeXT had been winning praise for their UI for years by that point, and Microsoft were consulting with Susan Kare (an Apple alum and NeXT employee). If you compare Nextstep 3.3 and Windows 95 or NT, you can see startling similarities in title bar size…

Soon after the Windows 95 release I heard that one of the members of the Windows 95 team had a copy of NeXTstep on a computer they used, and that it was a source of ‘inspiration’. I can’t find any reference to this now, but the 3D look and grey shades definitely are similar. Windows 95 looks much more like NeXTstep than Windows 3.11.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#262

Post by tinus_hn »

cr0sh wrote: post #204
einr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There absolutely was TCP/IP support in Windows 95 from the very beginning. It was not installed by default but it was trivial to add via the Network applet in Control Panel. SLIP/PPP was also supported and you had basic utilities like Telnet and FTP included so you could connect to the Internet right out of the box. No web browser, though. Internet Explorer 1.0 shipped with the optional Plus! pack.

> There absolutely was TCP/IP support in Windows 95 from the very beginning. I could have sworn that was all in the Plus! package too, but 20+ years of time has eroded my memory on that...

The browser was in the Plus! package.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#263

Post by cat199 »

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…

> I still get frustrated on OSX when I minimize a window and have to hunt around for it.

OSX took the NextStep/OpenStep interface and dumbed it down to great detriment, then added new things back (spaces, zooming) which were inferior logically but required less 'thinking' of how one works and more 'shiny looking' to potential customers..

IMHO hands down the best mouse-oriented window management paradigm to exist to date is the NextStep/OpenStep style over and above windows and osx, though I will admit windows has improved things with their sort of hybrid 'classic' windows+'macish' updates, and some of the newer ui things (e.g. window thumbnails) haven't made it into the current flagship of that lineage which is the open source WindowMaker..

Since the 'official' lineages are dead, am hoping the WindowMaker people continue to innovate/move this paradigm forward as they have been doing subsequently for the last N years...

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#264

Post by wvenable »

unicornporn wrote: post #40

I think it's beautiful. And, compared to Windows 10, Windows 95 was at least somewhat consistent design wise. After 12 years of macOS I recently got a Windows 10 machine. There's plenty of Windows 10 bling on top of the OS, but you don't have to dig deep before you encounter the embarrassing remnants from very early versions of Windows. Running the latest version of 10 it still feels very unfinished which I hope Micr…

Honestly I much prefer the old control panel and use it whenever possible on Windows 10. There is very little you actually need the new Settings dialog for. But I completely understand why it exists, the control panel is way too complex for the average user.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#265

Post by kllrnohj »

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…

> I wouldn't switch back because of the underlying crap that is the Windows [...] file system

You lost me. HFS+ is arguably one of the worst file systems around (yes I know that Apple finally switched to APFS but that was fairly recent).

I'm really curious what you actually liked about Mac's file system vs. Windows?

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#266

Post by tinus_hn »

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…

Not sure why you’d have to hunt for minimized windows because there is a separate area on the dock reserved for them, and the animation clearly shows the window moving towards it.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#267

Post by jaclaz »

thanatropism wrote: post #240
jaclaz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lesser known program for Windows 3.1/3.11 was at the time the Norton Desktop, see: http://toastytech.com/guis/ndw.html that provided, even on Windows 3.1/3.11 roughly the same UI of the Mac OS of the time, very similar, for some aspects, to the later Windows 9x one.

I remember someone who had an all-in-one Compaq PC with a version of Win 3.1 that had a shell with tabs on the top, not too unlike the "ribbon" of modern MS Office.

Possibly a Contura Aero with TabWorks?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TabWorks

http://www.supervinx.com/OnlineMuseum/Compaq/Contura/Aero%20...

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#268

Post by tinus_hn »

notriddle wrote: post #229
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are things from earlier Windows I wish they'd kept. Like the perfectly functional (actually more functional than their replacements) settings panels. But I think the biggest thing I miss is the start menu being just a view of a folder hierarchy. The Windows 10 Start Menu is tied into the appstore and uses some kind of database that can easily get corrupted and cause it to stop working seemingly randomly. Someti…

Except for three, humongous improvements that the Windows 10 start menu has over 95: * It is flush bottom right with the screen, making it a true "mile button". In 95, there was a tiny non-clickable border around it, so if you just slammed your mouse into the corner, it would not work; someone who worked on Mac OS described MSFT as "narrowly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" compared to the mac's menu bar, w…

> I think this was actually done with XP?

XP has a hack where if you click the bottom row of pixels on the screen, your mouse cursor is magically moved up enough pixels so you hit the buttons instead of the dead area.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#270

Post by mustacheemperor »

krylon wrote: post #9

The fact that the basic elements of Windows 95's GUI have survived for so long shows, I think, how well designed it was. For its time it was a great design that was intuitive to understand, relatively lightweight and did not get in my way. About the only changes I think improved things notably were the search field in the Start menu and Aero Snap.

The replacement of actual Search with this Cortana-based attempt at a "smart" search or Q&A interaction is absolutely agonizing to experience as a user and just a completely boggling decision to me in general. Why on earth did a search feature that will return something different from what you typed in, with the exact thing you typed in the secondary results, ever make it out of testing for public release? I have faith it'll improve over time, but right now Cortana in general feels like a step directly backwards in every category "she" touches. The Edge browser is actually pretty slick on the Surface, but instead of being able to right click selected text and search it, I have to "ask Cortana." I don't want to ask Cortana, I want to search that in Google.
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