Earlier quoted context omitted.
When a file refuses to rename because the OS thinks it is the same name. When you have multiple files that differ in case, but they overwrite each other because the OS thinks they are the same. Really, the only place case-insensitive filenames makes sense is when you are searching . It makes no sense for any other reason.
Files don't overwrite each other the operation is forced. All of the OSs I've used will prompt you before overwriting. I also like when an IDE detects and provides a warning when I have two variables with the same letters better different capitalization. Different case is often a bug.
Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
391–400 of 402 posts
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm largely familiar with the DOS -> Win2K period, and have made little use of Microsoft operating systems since. Windows 3, 95, NT, and 2K each saw significant changes in where and how major system functionality was presented. During the same period I was using numerous Unix and Linux platforms (and still do). Those have largely seen far less substantive change at the shell and system level , with a few notable exce…
I fear though that command level compatibility is under attack these days, as fewer and fewer see shell scripting as something positive (never mind trying to do more and more via dbus rather than pipes and such).
This includes a hell of a lot of systems configuration tools. The corrective force on failure to adhere to this norm is strong.
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very interesting point, and one that may play in subtle ways to each platform's audience and scale. Microsoft was always more vendor / ISV / VAR oriented, and stable APIs matter there.
I get the feel that stable APIs are undervalued as a user retention element. Being able to get a new computer but install from the same software library (i can hear the _sec people getting hissy already) as was used on the old one makes people more likely to pick the same "platform" over time.
The counter is that Apple caters to a smaller software development community, though several of the tools also see extensive use and support (particularly photoshop). But there's a heck of a lot fundamental functionality on Apple's platforms that you can get without relying on third-party software, or at least, third-party proprietary software. Given the dynamics of proprietary software markets, particularly toward adware, nagware, and malware, this seems a possibly positive development.
(I've made much the same observation in recent years about the Android marketplace, which I see as a growing cesspit, and of the Windows application space, particularly at the peak of its crapware / spyware / adware period in the decade of the 2000s.)
Linux solves the software compatibility problem by allowing for recompiling of software for which the source is freely available, for the most part. This isn't a perfect solution, and there are complex systems which tend to not be particularly forward-compatible. One possible argument is that such complex systems are themselves inherently problematic and ought perhaps be avoided. You may not agree with the argument, but I'd expect you'd admit to its existence.
Microsoft was addressing a different space, and one in which there was a massive focus on desktop-distributed client software, much of it aimed at very specific business applications. This is a major application area for computers, though it's also one that's shifted significantly toward client-server Web-based solutions (or app-based, now). Which presents its own set of features and limitations.
And again, all this is what I was hinting at earlier with noting that you'd presented a very interesting point. I'll be thinking about this for a while.
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get it, it's your computer, etc., etc. The reason this is done is of course that most applications don't have content that fill the entire screen, so maximizing, in most cases, is meaningless - and hinders the usability of the system. It makes more sense to leave some space over for other apps than have a big empty area on both sides of the screen. Interestingly, I noticed that it's only Windows-switchers who compl…
> most applications don't have content that fill the entire screen, so maximizing, in most cases, is meaningless It's a matter of where you place responsibility. It's like saying, "most websites aren't responsive, so naturally it makes sense to restrict the size of your browser window and leave space for other apps." But most would laugh at this and say it's the responsibility of the website/webapp to build a respons…
I think that's a misrepresentation. It's not a static size. It's not an artificial limit. If the document that's open has content to fill the entire screen, the window will fill the entire screen.
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find Contexts ( https://contexts.co/ ) a better application to do exactly that
Wow, looks like a very polished Witch and then some. The addition to the search looks interesting. Any area or use case thst witch is better? Is it as snappy? I like that Witch is instant.
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was even a parody song about how much Windows 95 sucked, but the criticism seemed more popularly aimed at its resource requirements than the UI design.
The requirements were practically negligible for its era, and the leap it represented. I have installed and used it at length on 386 with 8MB on a 210MB disk. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't pretty bad either. Perhaps (on appropriate hardware) it wasn't as solid as NT 4, but before XP (which is 2000 which is NT, even if simplifying it) there weren't many "polished enough" _and_ "affordable enough" windowing systems f…
Your 8 MB was the "recommended" requirement for 95, with 4 MB being the minimum. That wasn't pretty. If you have used 95 with only four megabytes of RAM and a small, slow hard drive, you'll learn that the minimum requirements are quite lower than comfortable, probably in order to more closely match what was actually a typical home computer at the time, some 386/486 with 4 MB RAM and a small hard drive. Where I'm from, Windows 95 pretty much meant getting a new PC for the average consumer.
So you go home with your newly bought copy of Windows 95 to your 386 with 4 MB that you bought 1-2 years ago, perform the minimum installation to your 100 MB hard drive and find out that it's super slow and constantly using virtual memory making the loud disk sound like a Geiger counter throughout the session. You compare it to Windows 3.11, DOS, whatever you had before and have a pretty solid basis for complaining about its resource usage.
Or worse, you read about Windows 95 and decide to finally sell your increasingly irrelevant Amiga 1200/3000/whatever now that you can also have preemptive multitasking on a PC, buy a cheap PC matching the Win 95 requirements with the money and install. Only to learn that it's 100x slower than Workbench, BSODs nearly as often as the Amiga gurus out, uses megabytes of RAM instead of kilobytes.
Or you have a Macintosh, couldn't care less about how exactly multitasking is achieved, and wow, PC seems like a nice option now that that too has a nice, user friendly GUI. And it works on cheap, affordable hardware! So you buy the cheapest, most affordable hardware that'll support Windows 95...
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I go back to /foo and try to click something else, say a file. This changes the to-be-saved-file's name to the selection. That is the most annoying part to me. Windows does this as well. It's such a rare thing to want to overwrite a file for me, I find it so irritating that if I accidentally click on a file name instead of a folder, suddenly I lose the file name that I wanted to save as. Usually I just cancel and s…
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Classic Mac OS (System 7 was contemporary to Windows 95)... System 7 was WAY earlier than Windows 95, it was 1991, a little more than 4 years earler (like an eternity): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7 "It was introduced on May 13, 1991 ..." And even 7.1 was almost exactly 3 years earlier: System 7.1 "In August 1992, the 7.1 update was released." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95 "It was released on Aug…
Windows did exist before 3.1
Sure it did, namely Windows 1.0, 2.10/2.11 (actually Windows/286 and Windows/386), but very few people used them.
Windows 3.0 was the first one to have some diffusion, but it had very limited capabilities, and it's adoption was slow because of the increased specifications for the PC, and in any case not comparable with the later wide adoption of 3.1.
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not arguing about NT 3.1, but what inconsistencies were there in Win7 UI? Starting with Win8 you have basically a random choice if some setting is set in "classic style" or new fancy "settings" dialogs. You can have all the performance in the world if your users spend most of the time just looking for the right place to do something.
Windows 7 has basically the same problem with settings. You have the dumbed-down, XP-style control panel that doesn't expose all the settings, and the hidden classic versions of the settings. For example, the useless user settings in the control panel and the more useful old version in "control userpasswords2".
In Windows 10 you have two different kinds of UI and settings that can be changed in one but can't be changed in the other and vice versa.
Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I still get frustrated on OSX when I minimize a window and have to hunt around for it Windows user here. Honest curiosity: does anyone know why the minimize / maximize works on the Mac the way it does? I mean, what's the rationale to design it like this?
macOS has Hide & HideOthers in addition to Minimize. I go weeks at a time without using minimize because of those. IMO there's a whole generation of people who did their early computing on MS Windows (including myself) and so internalised that that is how GUIs are "supposed to work". When moving to something else later in life there's a feeling that it is "wrong", but it (e.g macOS)'s way of doing things is also corr…