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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

#171

Post by Scapeghost »

atum47 wrote: post #138
Scapeghost wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yeah Plus is one of my favorite memories of Windows too, which happened around the same time I discovered drivers to let me see more than 256 colors for the first time :)

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

#172

Post by kuschku »

I’m impressed by how few people here have tested it in Firefox – Fieldset is broken, Button has ::-moz-focus-inner not properly disabled, Radio/Option isn’t rendering correctly (still shows the original input element as 2x2px black box), and quite a bit more.

Hilariously, this is quite a good example on why the Chrome monoculture is just repeating the IE monoculture of years past

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

#173

Post by tomxor »

I can't believe how intensely functional the UI design of windows 95/98 was when looking back, and I say this as someone who intensely hates windows overall - but credit where it's due.

Only when using it now is it clear how well they minimized ambiguity and cognitive load... everything is so frickin obvious. Contrast that with modern aesthetically obsessed UIs, ever ambiguous, lack of clear distinctions not in both spatial boundaries and UI states - it's a constant guessing game for the user, never certain about the outcome of an interaction, giving you this distracting sense of unease rather than just focusing on whats behind the UI.

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

#174

Post by Scapeghost »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #144
Scapeghost wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may as well argue against page numbers in books. Actually, yes, when was the last time you looked at a page number in an e-book? They don't make sense anyway when you can resize the reader.

Actually, they very much do: 1. As a relative marker of a current position. 2. As an absolute number when your ebook/reader screws up saving its state.

1. Is solved by "N Pages left in chapter" which is more useful than "Page N"

2. There is no "absolute number" of pages on a e-reader app or device because the window or font size can change, changing all the page numbers. You can have 100 pages or 200 pages.

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

#175

Post by tomxor »

kuschku wrote: post #172

I’m impressed by how few people here have tested it in Firefox – Fieldset is broken, Button has ::-moz-focus-inner not properly disabled, Radio/Option isn’t rendering correctly (still shows the original input element as 2x2px black box), and quite a bit more. Hilariously, this is quite a good example on why the Chrome monoculture is just repeating the IE monoculture of years past

I use FireFox, I don't think it's that bad... xbrowser native UI consistency is literally the hardest xbrowser thing to do.

Looking at firefox and chrome side by side it's actually impressive how they look near identical other than a few stray pixels.

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

#176

Post by prezjordan »

kuschku wrote: post #172

I’m impressed by how few people here have tested it in Firefox – Fieldset is broken, Button has ::-moz-focus-inner not properly disabled, Radio/Option isn’t rendering correctly (still shows the original input element as 2x2px black box), and quite a bit more. Hilariously, this is quite a good example on why the Chrome monoculture is just repeating the IE monoculture of years past

I’ve been getting a good amount of bug reports from FF users, and am grateful because - you are right - I did not test in it and should have.

I’m tracking the fieldset and inner-focus ones (though unable to repro the latter on my machine). The third is new to me if you’d be so kind as to share some details about your system.

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

#179

Post by [deleted] »

tomcooks wrote: post #151
Scapeghost wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> very tacky Fischer Price toy As in "something even a child could use"? Indeed > Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? To know how long the page is, to know what state we are BEFORE we interact with it, to know that there is no such a thing as "above the fold" or other nonsense, etc. Now allow me to ask you, with no intention to sound like an ass: why would you hide bars apart from saving 20px (which I ass…

[deleted]

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

#180

Post by tiborsaas »

noisem4ker wrote: post #140
tiborsaas wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree, it's a question of authoring freedom. We have a fairly recent "prefers-color-scheme: dark" media query for this which further proves my point, that it's either black or white by default.

If you, the author of the page decide to respect it then it's fine, but I'd be a bit mad if the browser decided to override my page design to an arbitrary grey shade if I don't declare a background color for the body.

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