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Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

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Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#301

Post by astrocat »

GeekyBear wrote: post #280
astrocat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maximize on Mac was NOT designed for the window to fill the whole screen, but rather to resize the window to optimally display its contents. The problem with this approach is I definitely do not need someone else making the decision of what is "optimal" for me. I've been using macOS for about as long as I used to use Windows now, and at this point, macOS seems to have largely abandoned the concept, which is great.…

The difference is that Windows never really embraced universal drag and drop and the Mac did. Macs used drag and drop for file management between windows representing separate locations on disk. Windows users tended to select files and choose cut or copy then navigate to the second location and paste. The same held true for moving content between documents in an application or moving content between applications. Mac…

That's a great distinction I hadn't thought of before, and it definitely makes sense - if you're focusing on drag-and-drop, you want as many windows visible somewhere on the screen as possible to maximize possible destinations.

Personally, I find drag-and-drop handy sometimes but it's very constraining. You have to go through non-standard motions to complete any more that is more than trivial, always holding down the primary mouse button and thereby losing your primary way of interacting with the interface. In other words, sure, if you have a clear view of your destination, then yeah, drag and drop is fine, but in all other instances, it becomes clunky.

Cut/paste is incredibly quick and doesn't sacrifice usability of your interface or input methods between the two ends of the transaction. Windows seemed to balance this out well, where you could drag and drop most of the time, but you could also ALWAYS cut/paste. I despise that I can't cut/paste in finder. Which is why I use PathFinder instead.

The danger cut/paste DOES pose is it fundamentally unlinks the start of the transaction and the end. In between, you can do literally anything, which may mean losing track of what's in your paste. Still, I'd call this a fair trade-off, specifically because it is non-destructive for files. You won't lose a file to to paste. It just stays put.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#302

Post by zamalek »

_jal wrote: post #131
mmphosis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different ways of working, mostly stuck in our own ways of doing things. I rarely, if ever, use Minimize on the Mac. Minimize comes from Windows (and other windowing systems) where the window minimizes to an icon or button on the task bar. "Maximize" also comes from Windows (and other windowing systems.) As others have noted, in newer macos (which I don't use,) I think it oddly makes the window go full screen. Full s…

All correct. In daily use, I almost never use those buttons - I end up manually sizing/placing windows. The the MacOS scheme of doing this leads a sort of organic, emergent window layout - I always end up with windows staggered to display relevant bits. With Windows (and with most window managers, X), things always end up either strict tiled or stacked. I'm very used to the Mac way and prefer it, but that could just…

Interesting. Now that you've made me think about it, I've realized that I use Windows more like a single-threaded operating system. I only ever flip between applications (ignoring my second monitor). I never, ever, combine multiple applications on the same monitor - this is crazy because this was the Windows 95 promise. Not that it's a bad thing, I'm used to the workflow and love it.

I absolutely agree with your guess as to why this is.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#303

Post by signal11 »

nsriv wrote: post #193
torstenvl wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Word 2016 also has "Don't show backstage while opening or saving files" in the same options dialog, which basically hides the Backstage UI[1] unless you specifically invoke it from the File menu, and shows a plain old Open/Save dialog instead.

I agree it's very ridiculous.

[1] 'Backstage UI' is the bit that looks like this: https://kiatplayground.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/save-to-o...

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#304

Post by rsync »

samstave wrote: post #244
pavlov wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows NT 4.0 had the same GUI as Windows 95 and was released in 1996. That's the version of Windows that sealed the deal for professional applications.

I’m trying to suss up some old memories... But NT was the first winOS which supported multi-proc, correct? NT4 was the first OS I could have my dual 266 intel procs run softimage IIRC

"I’m trying to suss up some old memories..."

NT4, Adaptec 2940u2w, and mirrored segate cheetah drives.

You had to space them out because a stack of two cheetahs would cook the upper one to death ...

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#305

Post by dpkonofa »

sodapopcan wrote: post #90
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…

The one thing I don't understand that Mac has never adopted is being able to use open and save dialogues as mini file explorers (move stuff around and rename, specifically). Having to switch to Finder to move or rename a file that has the same name as the file I'm trying to save is ridiculous. Of course I never need to do this anymore since I only work on text files under revision control, but it still seems odd to m…

I would normally agree with you here except that I've accidentally renamed files on Windows so many times only to lose them because something was in focus that I didn't intend to be. I use a combination of the mouse and keyboard when browsing and the fact that I can accidentally click on a file (which renames my current file to that file) and save or click enter thinking that I'm saving which then just starts to rename the file is utter garbage in an Open or Save dialog box. I feel like the only things I should be able to do are Open a file or Save a file but not rename other files. Neither is a good solution so it comes down to preference but I definitely see the reason for it because it happens to me on Windows all the time.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#306

Post by gsich »

blattimwind wrote: post #120
sodapopcan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing I don't understand that Mac has never adopted is being able to use open and save dialogues as mini file explorers (move stuff around and rename, specifically). Having to switch to Finder to move or rename a file that has the same name as the file I'm trying to save is ridiculous. Of course I never need to do this anymore since I only work on text files under revision control, but it still seems odd to m…

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…

Absolutely true. I use a MATE desktop too, I can't even rename files in the save dialog. And I don't want to look it up either because it is so inconsistent all the time...

I would extend your argument to Windows Explorer in general.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#307

Post by jandrese »

dfox wrote: post #281
jandrese wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet for the same compatibility reasons most people stuck with .jpg and .htm, at least in the Windows world. Even now it's very unusual to see a .jpeg extension on a filename. The metadata that Macs kept in the resource fork go way beyond file type and creator too. It included things like the file's Icon, creation/modification information (so it would survive a trip over the Internet!), loads of stuff for applications…

NTFS does not have resource fork in the MacOS sense nor extended attributes in the unix sense. Instead it allows for file to have multiple named contents that are accessible by same file IO API (in essence the file can behave like a simplified directory). There is no distinction between data and metadata stored this way. In the late 90s MS even intended to not use OLE compound storage fileformat (ie. what office 97/2…

Conceptually the MacOS Resource Fork is basically a directory where all of your filenames have to be exactly 4 characters long. The only difference is that each "file" might be a stack of "files". So you might have a CODE resource that has multiple CODE segments in it.

One thing I loved about old MacOS apps is opening them up in ResEdit and so much of how the thing was built.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#308

Post by ptx »

sodapopcan wrote: post #90
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…

The one thing I don't understand that Mac has never adopted is being able to use open and save dialogues as mini file explorers (move stuff around and rename, specifically). Having to switch to Finder to move or rename a file that has the same name as the file I'm trying to save is ridiculous. Of course I never need to do this anymore since I only work on text files under revision control, but it still seems odd to m…

Another good approach might be to do it the other way around: Get rid of the pseudo-file-manager dialogs entirely and let applications integrate with the regular file manager.

I think RISC OS (?) did this. Open documents in applications had icons representing them which you could drag to the file manager to save. (And perhaps to other applications to open?) Mac OS also has (or had?) this to some extent – many document-based applications show an icon in the title bar, which is for dragging and dropping the document in question.

Even Windows has an example of catering to this way of working, in Explorer, where the folder icon in the location bar represents the current folder and can be dragged and dropped. They even have some custom behavior to prevent the window from being raised when you drag from it, so that it works more like classic Mac OS and lets you drag to an overlapping window.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#309

Post by nnq »

blattimwind wrote: post #160
sigzero wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that is extremely non-intuitive. It's an "Open" and "Save" dialog. That is what it should do. Joe Public is not going to know it does anything else, yet it does.

Actually, you completely missed my point. The Windows dialogue is not only superior, because it allows power users to do what they need, but also because it's actually usable for regular users. For example: I literally can't know how I can save a file using Gnome's dialogue in the general case, e.g. if the dialogue opens at /foo, and I navigate to /foo/bar using the dialogue, but then go back to /foo ("bar wasn't the…

As a long-time Gnome user, I've only realized how bad it is after reading this comment ;) (No irony here, I agree it's truly horrible now.)

But, I only realized it now because almost none of the apps I regularly use make use of Gnome's default file open/save dialog. Linux's extreme inconsistency has some benefits ;)

Oh, and talking about Gnome, the only reason anyone uses it is that after configuring a few basic stuff, you can completely ignore it, just run your apps, forget that there's an actual OS with GUI somewhere beneath them. Heck, if even the applications running on it ignore Gnome and its "standard widgets", its biggest strength is that it can be easily ignored!

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#310

Post by favorited »

sodapopcan wrote: post #90
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…

The one thing I don't understand that Mac has never adopted is being able to use open and save dialogues as mini file explorers (move stuff around and rename, specifically). Having to switch to Finder to move or rename a file that has the same name as the file I'm trying to save is ridiculous. Of course I never need to do this anymore since I only work on text files under revision control, but it still seems odd to m…

I have the opposite experience WRT Finder vs Explorer. I use a Mac as my primary machine, but have a PC for games. Trying to use a file browser without Miller columns[0] drives me crazy.

I love being able to drag a file up one level in the tree without cutting and navigating to the destination to paste, or having 2 windows open to almost the exact same location.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns

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