Windows 95 UI Design • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#201

Post by whywhywhywhy » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

zapzupnz wrote: post #53

erikpukinskis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Force touch is the best evidence we have that designers have lost their power at Apple. The best thing Steve Jobs did was hire serious designers and defend their ideas against the rest of the organization. That’s clearly not happening anymore. My guess is that “Designer at Apple” became such a desirable title that the design roles have been taken over by wannabees.

Force Touch is on its way out. Has been for about two generations of iPhone. There's now Haptic Touch which is nothing but a long-press with better feedback.

Worth noting they also disabled the feature on older hardware in iOS13 for feature parity. So even if your device can detect pressure it no longer bothers.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#202

Post by taf2 » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 12:58 PM UTC

All I can add to this is my experience with my daughter and the switch from iOS 6 to iOS 7. Our iPad was about a year old and I decided to upgrade to ios7. She was 3 and we would take her on walks and she’d hold her iPad and watch shows (bad parents I know). Anyways with iOS 7 she got so frustrated because she could figure out how to watch her favorite show (play button was nearly impossible to see and they started including shows that you need to be online to watch but with no clear indicator). She threw the iPad an amazing distance with unreal strength. I wished it was more obvious for her as ios6 a 3 year old could master...

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#203

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #198

asjw wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 95 came out 25 years ago and many jumped directly from DOS or typewriters to it She has +25 years of experience in using computing devices now, and computers are hundreds of times more powerful, of course things are easier for her

I don’t think that argument holds very strongly. My grandma worked on typewriters, and then word processors in the 70s/80s. She had no problem doing her job. She’d been using a Windows laptop since the mid/late 2000’s, and it’s always been a huge struggle for her. She’d frequently enable/disable features without noticing, etc. Her tablet has been, as they say, like a glass of iced water in hell. She is far from a pow…

[deleted]

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#204

Post by buboard » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

Sadly , this is a theme with tech, it progresses in cycles. FB replaces forums which replace yahoo which replace newsgroups. In terms of ideas, there is very few that wasn't there in the 90s, (infinite scrolling maybe; afforded by increased RAM - i can't think of others). Since CPU performance has stangated, the last few cycles of generic computing have focused on design. That's the main selling point now, and you see that in the proliferation of UX jobs and attempts to squeeze the last drops of user engagement with things such as 'onboarding' etc. Design has become inane, of course, it completely ignores human capacities such as contour-perception, response time, consistency, but it doesn't matter, because the game has changed: it's now about how you capture the user faster and then lock her in. Wasting their time trying to figure out the app is now a positive sign: "the user is engaged".

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#205

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #61

pcurve wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25 years later, we still don't have good, standardized, robust Ui controls for browsers. Why is there no HTML tag for creating menu bar and nested dropdown menu? Instead we have to search through thousands of libraries or plugins with mixed bag of accessibility. Just that control alone will probably save companies globally billions of dollars in wasted labor searching, building, and maintaining.

> Why is there no HTML tag for creating menu bar and nested dropdown menu? because HTML was never designed to be a application interface, and I don't see a menu-bar nor dropdown as necessary for a document display. What's needed for the web is a common and standarized (i.e., browser provided) library for application UI that's distinct from the existing HTML markup. They should not mix, and if you have a document (rat…

Just like XHTML was supposed to be, oh well.

I think WASM will bring "Flash" back, just in a different form, and now everyone will be happy because it is standard.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#206

Post by omegabravo » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:06 PM UTC

eitland wrote: post #167

akho wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ribbon has explanations that popup if you hover

Ribbon contains everything that is available in the menus, and is collapsible. Ribbon also supports keyboard accelerators

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#207

Post by ygra » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

yellow_lead wrote: post #5

Hey, at least Win95 UI wasn't based on Electron. I'd prefer this UI if it meant Win95's snappyness. (most of the time :)

Heck, the whole of Windows 95 has a smaller install size than any Electron app ...

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#208

Post by buboard » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #81

petilon wrote: post #20

The Windows 95 UI was inspired by NextStep. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_... Before Windows 95 was released there was CTL3D.DLL which gave a NextStep-like look & feel to Windows 3.1. See this image for the improvement made by CTL3D.DLL: http://www.win3x.org/screens/15nvtbm.gif

That.. doesn’t actually functionally change a whole lot? Though I can see how it would be super cool at the time.

most apps didnt, but the consistency was much better with 95. The major user-facing changes was the taskbar and right clicks. It felt really consistent and made sense as a whole remarkably better than previous versions.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#209

Post by blattimwind » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:14 PM UTC

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…

> Now my screen is the very picture of elegance and sophistication.

Is it? Windows 10 looks like installing a custom skin on Windows XP went wrong and now you're stuck with "Windows Classic (Flat)" set up for weird colors.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#210

Post by criddell » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #119

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.

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.

There's no reason toolbars couldn't also be dynamic.