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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

#161

Post by soulofmischief »

fstephany wrote: post #123
cm2187 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fashion is cyclical. At one point people will get bored of these ambiguous modern UI with hidden fields and gestures, and made of 50 shades of light grey that only a calibrated display can render with any discernable contrast. And we will rediscover the merit of clear and explicit UIs, and Apple will claim it just invented it!

Haiku OS and Gnome have such a different feeling when I use them. Haiku has this delightful vibe to it, I can't explain.

Gnome evokes the feeling of shoving my eyes through a cheese-grater and then being gaslighted about the usefulness of every UI convenience I've come to take for granted.

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

#163

Post by andrepd »

schrijver wrote: post #79
cm2187 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fashion is cyclical. At one point people will get bored of these ambiguous modern UI with hidden fields and gestures, and made of 50 shades of light grey that only a calibrated display can render with any discernable contrast. And we will rediscover the merit of clear and explicit UIs, and Apple will claim it just invented it!

I wouldn’t be surprised :) The Windows 95 aesthetic is already back into fashion, I see it a lot on flyers, web art… just not yet in computer applications! I guess that’s a matter of time. Check out the flyer for this party: https://highclouds.org/highclouds-online-antivirus-party-mag... They used vectors, looks like the Windows 95 aesthetics that was so connected to pixel survives this transition quite well!

That's vaporwave, a specific aesthetic style, and it's quite different from Win98 design making a mainstream comeback :p

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

#164

Post by tomcooks »

andy_ppp wrote: post #152
xattt wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am pretty sure it’s deliberate, I mean did ‘98 have clear type yet? Did it work?

[No, it started with XP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClearType#Implementations)

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

#166

Post by prezjordan »

JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #128

Hey man, if you're looking for the fonts I had them on a similar thing I done a while ago. Only normal size unfortunately https://github.com/padraigfl/packard-belle/tree/master/src/_... Cant remember where I sourced them from but it's probably in the code somewhere, the MSSansSerif ones are pixel perfect as far as I'm aware. It outputted CSS to be used independently but it was very much a secondary concern, pretty su…

Beautiful work, thanks so much :) I'll keep poking at fonts and see what I can learn https://github.com/jdan/98.css/issues/10

I love that we arrived at the ~same solution using inset shadows for the buttons. Makes me feel validated.

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

#167

Post by prezjordan »

birslip wrote: post #158

It's great, I love it! It's quite similar to this project on iOS: https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit They even went as far as building a fake Internet Explorer app.

Woah, amazing attention to detail there. I love that they include this image in the README [0], buttons were the first thing that hooked me into building this.

[0] https://github.com/Baddaboo/ClassicKit/raw/master/Images/pix...

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

#168

Post by sdegutis »

anthk wrote: post #112
squiggleblaz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. I was just thinking of that. Been wondering if there's any operating system I can theme to look like Win3.1 any more - the aesthetic of Windows 95 is better but Windows 3.1 seems to fit our contemporary standards of flat and fewer colors better. I did like the more rounded buttons of Windows 3.1 better than the harsher edges of the Windows 95 buttons. The mistakes a driving me crazy. I assume the fonts are just…

Linux + XFCE has a Win 3.1 theme on b00merang's site. Borrow the icons from the Chicago95 theme and you are done.

Oh man, Chicago95 is almost enough to make me try out Desktop Linux again.

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

#169

Post by jannes »

runxel wrote: post #110
jannes wrote: post #99

I noticed that it's using box-shadow for the "3d effect" on buttons and window borders. I'm a bit disappointed they didn't use the "inset" or "outset" border-style [0] which pretty nobody uses anymore these days. I thought this kind of design is pretty much why these border-styles exist. [0]: https://htmldog.com/references/css/properties/border-style/

It may be because the transition wouldn't be as smooth as it is now?

Did Windows 98 have smoooth transitions, though?

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

#170

Post by VikingCoder »

prezjordan wrote: post #63

Author here! Thanks for all the nice comments (and helpful bug reports). This idea has been in the back of my mind for ~2 years now but I recently got a wave of motivation and decided to ride it - and here we are. Happy to answer any Qs :)

Fun work! Thanks for sharing.

I was somewhat reminded of Wt [1], and I still wish that were open source. Also reminded a bit of Blazor [2].

[1] https://www.webtoolkit.eu/widgets/layout/

[2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/blazor/?view=as...

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