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Windows 95 UI Design

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Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#271
it was easier to explain over the phone too. EXP: Click Start > Control Panel > Sound > Playback Tab > Right Click the Speakers > Set as default audio device. Grandma can hear her youtube videos again while i'm still at the beach.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it's still a net gain. What you are talking about is a priority problem.

That problem is applying the right UX to more people more of the time. That costs more than just doing one size fits all, and we should be paying those costs more, in my view.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#273
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the original Mac had invisible UI: the double click. It's an undiscoverable operation that people had to be taught, and invented so that Jobs could squeeze two operations onto one button because one button looked cleaner.

Were two button mice even around when the original Mac was introduced? It might not have been due to aesthetics.

[deleted]

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#274
post #177

Here is something else: The interface was "responsive". And I don't mean the responsive designs we have today for HTML but that when you click a button, you get a "response" very fast from the monitor. Now, with these new interfaces and stuff, most of them are so lag-y that you can notice them with your eyes. It's very frustrating. I tried Bisq a couple days ago. The application was apparently made with Electron and…

Electron and Material Design need to die with fire.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to discover when there are only two buttons on your mouse. If it had one and pressing strongly did something else, you'd be right.

It's just as easy to press harder "force touch" as it is to right click. Sorry, but the Windows 95 user interface had the exact same discoverability issue.

I agree, and like the right click, force touch options were always accelerators for more confidant users (rather than being the only way to complete some task).

Personally I loved force touch and a few months on iOS 13 I’m still struggling with transition to long press gesture instead.

The problem with long press as an accelerator is that it’s triggered by a deliberate pause. It might just be a few hundred milliseconds but the perceived time is very frustrating.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opening a Context menu was never a destructive action though, so you could click that other button on your mouse all day without risk. You have to be taught that a context menu exists once, but it's safe & consistent from then on

Force touching an item to see if there is a contextual menu isn't a destructive action. That doesn't change the fact that neither interface gives you a way to know in advance which items have associated contextual menus.

But if you "hard-press" a button that doesn't support hard-pressing, won't it just detect a normal press? Depending on what the button is, that might be destructive or at the very least time-consuming.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#277
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the original Mac had invisible UI: the double click. It's an undiscoverable operation that people had to be taught, and invented so that Jobs could squeeze two operations onto one button because one button looked cleaner.

Were two button mice even around when the original Mac was introduced? It might not have been due to aesthetics.

In 1983 the best number of buttons was not clearly established. PCs (the few that had mice) were tending to two according to the reference, while workstations were tending to three.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_button#Number_of_buttons

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#278
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the original Mac had invisible UI: the double click. It's an undiscoverable operation that people had to be taught, and invented so that Jobs could squeeze two operations onto one button because one button looked cleaner.

Were two button mice even around when the original Mac was introduced? It might not have been due to aesthetics.

I think some early mice had one button. Other early mice had two or three buttons (that would be chorded for different operations)

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any sort of a "marketplace" where people can upload and vote on alternative CSS themes for any given site? That would be cool.

An alternative to the Stylus extension that the parent comment mentions is the Stylish extension, which has a "marketplace" almost exactly what you're looking for. You don't even need the Stylish extension as each theme is also offered as a userscript. https://userstyles.org

Yeah, there's that; I wasn't sure about affiliation status between userstyles.org and Stylish.

FWIW, I still recommend installing Stylus instead of Stylish - the difference is that at some point, Stylish changed owner and acquired analytics; Stylus is a fork that's free of privacy-invading antifeatures.

Re: Windows 95 UI Design

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, in some cases, we can make investments to get productive on the new UX.

I did that with Android. Have to be honest. I can fly on a reasonable Android phone. Apple, not so much. Didn't want to make two investments.

Content create, communications, programming, social media, all aren't a burden today. Function set is limited, but it's not as big of a deal as it was prior to really working the UX, just like many of us did with the other paradigms. And I often just do not need a deeper set of features / flows too.

Not saying it's better. It's not in my view. But, I am also saying, users can do better with it than they may think.

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