Live data from Hacker News

98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

jdan.github.io

11–20 of 216 posts

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#12
I think this would be a great reference for teaching introductory UI design; with the 3D-ness you can clearly see the different states that each UI element requires.

I also really like the quotes about each component! Is there an online copy of this Microsoft Windows User Experience manual somewhere?

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#13

This is great, I would love to be able to use this. Win98 always felt like a highpoint in easy to UI design. I am not a CSS ninja, how easy would it be to make this responsive? The example do not appear to be responsive.

I somehow enjoyed the ride to css3 and full fledged responsive multi layer dom presentations but I do miss the wintel days GUI concept. Something about the simplicity, clarity.. makes it more to the point than the hyper capable yet systems of today.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#15
post #2

Oh yes. I can't wait to think of a product to build using this design system.

I’ve got one, build the windows desktop with an IE link, basically a div with an iframe, and a text box.

I wonder how many windows apps we can build out in a few lines of JS.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#16

Certainly evokes a lot of nostalgia. The tactile feel of 3D buttons can be mesmerizing at times, a lot of experience has been lost in the race to flat, in addition to lowered affordability of modern UIs. One bug: Firefox on Linux introduces an extra dotted rectangle on focused buttons (so they end up with two oddly overlapping focus indicators)

There are a few extra bugs: one should be able to style a 'default' button with an extra black border giving it a lightly "inset" appearance, as is usual in this style. And "disabled" buttons shouldn't react to a click by changing their appearance. It would also be nice to support tristate checkbox and radio buttons (the "3rd" state is basically a selection with lowered contrast, so this should be achievable) and "ON/OFF switch"-like controls, which appear as "sticky" buttons where the ON state also has a lighter background.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#20

Isn't it a bit ridiculous that we need to do this in the first place? Shouldn't clear 3D controls on a neutral gray background be the default user-agent appearance, with no need for custom CSS of any sort?

Considering non-formatted HTML files are supposed to be documents, not windows, no?

Adding to this: without any specification, the browser should, and does, use the operating system's native controls when rendering controls such as .

Post reply on HN