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

jdan.github.io

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

#131

Post by noisem4ker »

chrisseaton wrote: post #119
noisem4ker wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An always visible scroll bar or indicator is conceptually simpler than one that disappears randomly. Knowing that a view is scrollable and there's more content to see is absolutely not an obscure edge case but a basic accessibility feature. Relevant past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20951580 Also relevant, what happens when the user doesn't realize more content is available: https://news.ycombinat…

Well I just subjectively disagree - as apparently do the legions of professional experts at multiple distinct companies who research user interaction and design these interfaces.

I'm convinced designers have since long overthrown human-machine interaction experts, and usability consistently went down in the search for what's visually appealing and cleaner. I particularly blame Apple as a trend-setter in this, along with everyone that dumbly followed the fashion. No appeal to authority will ever convince me that disappearing scroll indicators are good for me, as I've been burned by them and I see less able people around me having ever increasing difficulty navigating modern interfaces thanks to similar innovations.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

noisem4ker wrote: post #131
chrisseaton wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I just subjectively disagree - as apparently do the legions of professional experts at multiple distinct companies who research user interaction and design these interfaces.

I'm convinced designers have since long overthrown human-machine interaction experts, and usability consistently went down in the search for what's visually appealing and cleaner. I particularly blame Apple as a trend-setter in this, along with everyone that dumbly followed the fashion. No appeal to authority will ever convince me that disappearing scroll indicators are good for me, as I've been burned by them and I…

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by noisem4ker »

chrisseaton wrote: post #120
Symbiote wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing how long a document is, and whereabouts your current view is, seems pretty fundamental. You may as well argue against page numbers in books.

You just scroll a tiny bit and you can see. Doesn't need to on the screen all the time, taking up space, distracting from the content which is what I care about, rather than whizz-bang user-interface elements.

Me asking myself "how long is this article" before I start reading it is a distraction? Too bad, I can't help but want to know. I could've learned that instantly by unconsciously glancing at the scroll indicator, but instead I have to move the whole content down for it to appear (possibly with a whizz-bang animation, no less), introducing friction and further distracting me from the content. Good job, I guess.

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

#134

Post by xattt »

andy_ppp wrote: post #81

My god they have even managed to switch off the anti aliasing of fonts! Looks so accurate I doubt I would be able to tell the difference, well done.

I can’t decide whether the aliasing is part of the aesthetic or not.

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

#135

Post by chrisseaton »

noisem4ker wrote: post #133
chrisseaton wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just scroll a tiny bit and you can see. Doesn't need to on the screen all the time, taking up space, distracting from the content which is what I care about, rather than whizz-bang user-interface elements.

Me asking myself "how long is this article" before I start reading it is a distraction? Too bad, I can't help but want to know. I could've learned that instantly by unconsciously glancing at the scroll indicator, but instead I have to move the whole content down for it to appear (possibly with a whizz-bang animation, no less), introducing friction and further distracting me from the content. Good job, I guess.

I don't know what you tell you - most people don't think about user interfaces like this. As we can clearly tell by people not designing them like this anymore.

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

#136

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

petters wrote: post #41

Would be cool if it came with JS to resize, move close windows etc.

When I was trying to do something similar I left all that stuff to the side on the assumption someone had made a neat wrapper to handle it

...and they did! https://github.com/bokuweb/react-rnd

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

#137

Post by detaro »

chrisseaton wrote: post #108
djsumdog wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95 and XP both had good scroll bars. XP styling was pretty good for its era. Modern day scroll bars are atrocious on a lot of toolkits.

Now that we have touch gestures we don’t really need visible scroll bars anymore do we? Just the little position indicator that pops up while scrolling.

Even Apple-designed software on Apple devices doesn't always have hints that an area is scrollable, and users missing features as a result. And in other ecosystems, doing that reliably is even harder, given the variation between devices. Always having a system-provided scroll indicator by default solves that universally.

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

#138

Post by atum47 »

Scapeghost wrote: post #83
atum47 wrote: post #25

that's really gorgeous. I find windows 95 aesthetics a master piece. I'm not gonna lie, I thought about windows 95 when I was creating FOS, my Fake Operational System "framework". I'm thinking about refactoring it and I'll may incorporate windows color scheme to it. Here's the link if you wanna see what I am talking about. https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fos

I don't know, Windows 95 looked crude even during its day. Functional, but not pleasant. I guess Brutalist would be the term? As soon as there was the ability to skin it, people tried to veer away the default look, with Mac-like styles being a common alternative. People probably have rose-tinted nostalgia for the 95 era because of the nightmare that followed: Windows XP :)

First my father upgrade our PC to Windows 95, coming from Windows 3.1 I thought it looked gorgeous. Some time passes by and my father come home with a Windows 95 Plus CD. Yep, that was the real deal. Lots of themes with different color schemes and sounds. I particularly remember the "mistery" theme. I could just sit there and look at it for hours.

https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+95+mystery+theme&cli...

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

#139

Post by buckminster »

Scapeghost wrote: post #104
djsumdog wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95 and XP both had good scroll bars. XP styling was pretty good for its era. Modern day scroll bars are atrocious on a lot of toolkits.

> XP styling was pretty good for its era. XP was skinned like a very tacky Fischer Price toy, with garish colors and oversized elements that would have been more at home on a touchscreen. I don't think anyone called it a good theme unsarcastically. Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? They just take screen space and billions of people do fine without them on Macs and mobile OSes.

Yet weirdly, even with its "oversized" elements a typical Windows XP dialog still managed to present far more information on the screen than the corresponding Windows 10 dialog.

Almost like the removal of scrollbars had nothing to do with saving space.

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

#140

Post by noisem4ker »

tiborsaas wrote: post #70
zozbot234 wrote: post #10

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?

No, it's not. If it were gray then it would be already opinionated. Why #eee, why not #e9e9e9 or #fefefe or how about #c9c9c9? That doesn't make much sense and it's hard to settle on a color or should it be Tim Berners Lee average hair color? :) So what remains is either black or white. White seems to be a more rational pick.

The system theme should reflect the user's opinion (or at least their learned expectation), thus browsers should honor the system theme.
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