Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Windows 95 UI Design

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 312 posts

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#141

Post by ahartmetz »

ddingus wrote: post #89
pvg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young children, the elderly, the desktop-bewildered still use iPads and touchscreen phones more readily than they ever used desktop UIs. I think as experienced computer-users we easily miss that this has been a genuine revolution in UI reach.

My 3 year old rules any tablet. Can get to the movies and pictures quick. Will even make phone calls when they get hold of a phone. The right phone calls. It is an advance.

I often hear this argument. It could be used to argue that comics are better than novels and overalls are better than regular clothes. Three year olds are three year olds - what is best for them is not necessarily best for adults.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#142

Post by thdrdt »

I see a lot of designers who are very creative but are creating artwork instead of interaction designs.

The problem is: it sells.

Customer wants a website, designer makes a peace of art, customer thinks it looks amazing, contracts are signed.

The the trouble starts when it is getting build.

Real texts are much longer than designed, the available pictures don't fit as good as the hand picked stock pictures, and the interaction.. well it all looked great on paper.

I believe it's dumb to get contracts this way because the project always delays because the client doesn't get what works.

It's better to sell customers a moodboard and then design interaction as the project moves along.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#144

Post by akho »

divbzero wrote: post #94

I forgot how nice it was to have underlined alt keyboard shortcuts. We got so much right so early in the age of personal computing. Goodbye to all that, hello Ribbon and flatness everywhere. It’s as if we’re in the Middle Ages now looking back at the great ruins of ancient Athens.

The ribbon has Alt shortcuts with clear hints. It’s an all-around improvement on menus.

Not on the Mac though. But Macs also don’t have alt shortcuts in menus.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#145

Post by akho »

catalogia wrote: post #140
mavhc wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure having every toolbar open at once would use more space. Ribbon is dynamic to your current task, using a table? Table tab is available.

> Ribbon is dynamic to your current task, using a table? Table tab is available. So were toolbars in Microsoft Office were similarly dynamic.

Toolbars were not keyboard accessible, and usually unlabeled. The ribbon is a huge improvement.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#146

Post by alkonaut »

I still make windows desktop software in my day job and a lot of these things are still there. Like ellipses for elements launching dialog. I also think resizable windows etc are still displaying a draggable corner as a hint?

All of this is pretty natural - so long as you design native desktop software using native controls.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#147

Post by PunksATawnyFill »

m_mueller wrote: post #125
jclulow wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think right click is in the same category. For one thing, the right mouse button is prominent and next to the left one. For another, there was a pretty well established language that right clicking either did nothing (was harmless) or brought up a contextual menu of advanced actions you could then read.

And Apple UI designers (IMO rightfully) were against exactly these hidden context menus. You can see in the older versions of Pages/Keynote/Numbers how UI was meant to work: Instead of right-click menus there was the Info button (promimently found in the shortcut list), which opened a non-modal context menu that could be placed anywhere on screen in a persistent way. This then allowed manipulating all the detail obje…

Not always. After working for years at Apple I was told (in response to a bug report I filed about missing menu items) that Mac menus might totally change their contents if you PRESSED A MODIFIER KEY. WTF!

So every Mac menu conceivably had (has?) 7 sets of contents, 6 of which are essentially secret. Idiotic.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#148

Post by PunksATawnyFill »

_trampeltier wrote: post #7

Back then you also could create your own theme. You could set the colors for text, backround, buttons etc. and every App did respect and use it. Today you can choose dark or light mode and almost no App does respect it, instead they bring there own colors and options.

YES.

Under Windows I created and used a "dark" theme in 1991, nearly identical to what the canned Mac OS "dark" one is today. Used it well into the 2000s.

Microsoft REMOVED that capability in what, Vista? And now that everyone has finally realized how stupid inverse color schemes are, the color-scheme editor is totally gone from Windows. It was in there for a decade and a half or more.

They also removed the "blue background, white text" option from Word, just a couple years ago.

Windows is an execrable mess now.

Apple, which forced an inverse color scheme on its users for 30+ years, has at least granted them some relief. But it's still pathetic to hobble a OS's UI with hard-coded color schemes.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#149

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

Stratoscope wrote: post #59

> The ellipsis hints that this button opens a dialog, instead of immediately executing an action. That's not exactly what the ellipsis is intended to communicate. Have you ever wondered why File/Open... has the ellipsis, but in a properly designed app, Help/About does not have it? Even though Help/About opens a dialog too? The distinction is that the ellipsis indicates that a command will take some action after furth…

According to Apple HIG plain confirmations did not require an ellipsis:

"Don’t use an ellipsis character if the command displays an alert box to warn the user of a potentially dangerous action, especially if the command displays an alert box only sometimes. In this case you are simply giving the user an opportunity to cancel a potentially dangerous action (such as causing a loss of data), not asking for more information."

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#150

Post by SamReidHughes »

userbinator wrote: post #126
SamReidHughes wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 3 themes never worked that well though. Dark mode is a single Boolean flag, which is much easier for application developers to follow.

Dark mode is a single Boolean flag, which is much easier for application developers to follow. The whole point is that application developers don't even have to care about it if they do things right, by using the OS's UI controls they will automatically be drawn with whatever colour the user has set.

But in reality, apps didn't perfectly follow the theme, and an attempt at "dark" theming resulted in big bright splotches of white on your CRT monitor.
Post reply on HN