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Windows 95 UI Design

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Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#161

Post by TeMPOraL »

grawprog wrote: post #106
andrepd wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ribbon is actually a good interface, for me at least, much more pleasant to use than toolbars. The flatness and whitespace everywhere though, that can die in a fire.

But toolbars are essentially the same thing except they don't waste space, are moveable, resizable, typically customizable, and can be hidden.

Ribbon gets more useful once you have a device with a touch screen. It's like a toolbar, except the buttons are bigger and it has tabs. I started to appreciate it (particularly in Windows Explorer) when I got my first 2-in-1 device. That said, with a stylus, regular toolbars work OK too.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#162

Post by TeMPOraL »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #150
userbinator wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was a problem then, but today, you'd think cases like this would be immediately reported as bugs on the issue trackers. Unfortunately, while we've gained in the development support tooling and speed of software distribution, we've also lost the basic sanity of GUI implementation.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#163

Post by alkonaut »

k__ wrote: post #29
est wrote: post #22

I used to play with VB5 and VB6, the RAD process was better than any of today's separated backend/frontend antd CSS-layout scaffolding data binding frameworks bullshit. The best part of the unified UI controls is you can use tools like Spy++ to discover programs on the fly. Today's Internet there are thousands of web frameworks and you need thousands of source mapping or else it's an ocean of minified gibberish.

Serious question: if it was so much better, why is it gone now?

The really-RAD thing doesn’t have a good equivalent today, but I also think developers asked for something that created slightly more maintainable code even if at the cost of slightly less RAD.

C#/VB with WinForms was the successor to VB6 and doesn’t sacrifice much in terms of development speed but added a lot of modern conveniences (high dpi etc..) that would have cost too much to add to VB6.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#164

Post by zozbot234 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #161
grawprog wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But toolbars are essentially the same thing except they don't waste space, are moveable, resizable, typically customizable, and can be hidden.

Ribbon gets more useful once you have a device with a touch screen. It's like a toolbar, except the buttons are bigger and it has tabs. I started to appreciate it (particularly in Windows Explorer) when I got my first 2-in-1 device. That said, with a stylus, regular toolbars work OK too.

IME, ribbons are way too fiddly to work well as a pure touch interface. Toolbars with "large" buttons (as first seen, IIRC, in Win98) are a lot better.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#165

Post by eitland »

flippyhead wrote: post #99
RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #4

A generation was raised on usable designs which clearly communicated interactability with a consistent visual language. It is only natural that they would come to think of computers as inherently ordered, understandable devices. Machines had always been this way. It was obvious to this new generation that the affordances of youth were purely redundant. Clutter. Overhead. Junk! Widget by widget, pixel by pixel, bevels…

Idk, my mom found windows 95 etc very hard to use but has no trouble with her iPhone, iPad or even a Mac (let alone the TV or can-speak-to appliance). Maybe part of is it is that a lot of problems that required UI solutions before just work magically now. Like file sharing, networking or dealing with different document formats. You don't need nearly as many controls for the most part so the UI can be simpler.

That is actually a good point. Simple stuff might have become simpler.

That said I am firmly in the "we lost something between 95 and here" camp for now.

And to while it does explain why pads are different it doesn't explain why we needed to mess up the desktop in the process.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#166

Post by TeMPOraL »

ddingus wrote: post #158
ahartmetz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Never said it was best. I agree with you. Still, it is an advance. More work overall remains to reach more optimal for more people more of the time.

Not necessarily, if it debilitates the majority of the user population (adults) - if it helps some people get more done, while making much more people get much less done.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#167

Post by eitland »

akho wrote: post #145
catalogia wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Toolbars came with explanations that popped up if you hovered.

They also were primarily shortcuts as everything could be reached using the menus anyway.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#168

Post by [deleted] »

pvg wrote: post #72
mixmastamyk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad touch screen device was intuitive for a while, until featuritis took over. Explorer too for that matter.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#169

Post by TeMPOraL »

pvg wrote: post #72
mixmastamyk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad touch screen device was intuitive for a while, until featuritis took over. Explorer too for that matter.

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.

I don't think we miss that. We're just paying attention to what that revolution cost us.

Part of the problem is the "winner takes all" dynamic of the computing sector. I'd be fine with simplified interface for children and elderly existing side by side with a properly deep interface for adults in full capacity. But currently, the market can only sustain one of these - and it chooses the one that can support more users, despite the total loss of utility this causes.

Porting an example I use in topics about accessibility: consider Braille. Everyone can learn to read Braille, but blind people can't learn to read regular, printed characters. But we don't try to replace print with Braille, because it would be ridiculously debilitating to the vast majority of the planet's population. We instead opt to run two interfaces side by side - we print both regular and Braille books.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#170

Post by tonyedgecombe »

alkonaut wrote: post #163
k__ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: if it was so much better, why is it gone now?

The really-RAD thing doesn’t have a good equivalent today, but I also think developers asked for something that created slightly more maintainable code even if at the cost of slightly less RAD. C#/VB with WinForms was the successor to VB6 and doesn’t sacrifice much in terms of development speed but added a lot of modern conveniences (high dpi etc..) that would have cost too much to add to VB6.

High DPI support in WinForms is a dogs dinner and it didn't arrive until well after VB6 was dead.
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