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Windows98 Running in the Browser

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Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#241

Post by 0xffff2 »

gsich wrote: post #231
0xffff2 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at least XP would let you switch back to Windows 2000 look and feel. The eye candy was just that, and easily removed. When Windows 7 rolled around I spent years being mad that it was no longer possible to have a Windows 2000 style UI in unmodified Windows. I recently set my desktop to the Windows 2000 default blue background color just for a bit of nostalgia. As far as I can tell, it's the only bit of Win 2000 UI…

There still was a "classic" theme.

Ah, I guess my memory is faulty. It looks like Windows 8 was actually the first version to do away with the classic theme entirely.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#242

Post by asadlionpk »

vel0city wrote: post #162
square_usual wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an 8 year old child, I never understood what briefcases were but that didn't prevent me from having tons of them.

Briefcases were supposed to be a tool to easily sync a directory structure with removable storage or a spotty network connection. Say you've got a computer at home and a computer at the office. You do a bit of work on some files over the weekend with your files in your briefcase. When it is time to head to the office on Monday you pop in a floppy disk (or PDA, or some other removable storage) and sync your briefcase…

a floppy-based Dropbox.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#243

Post by dmitrygr »

0xffff2 wrote: post #210
izietto wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I've never used Windows 2000, I went straight to Windows XP, whose UI was already too bloated (many colors, gradient buttons, ...)

But at least XP would let you switch back to Windows 2000 look and feel. The eye candy was just that, and easily removed. When Windows 7 rolled around I spent years being mad that it was no longer possible to have a Windows 2000 style UI in unmodified Windows. I recently set my desktop to the Windows 2000 default blue background color just for a bit of nostalgia. As far as I can tell, it's the only bit of Win 2000 UI…

To the day I remember the color (all my desktops are that color) rgb 45,110,145

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#245

Post by Guest0918231 »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #223
blauditore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. People were just not used to a full-screen, search-focused start menu. A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI. The next version was then a slightly milder version of it, and at the same time people had gotten used to it a bit, so most were happy with Windows 7 and are now h…

> People were just not used to a full-screen, search-focused start menu Ok, a search-focused menu is fine, but what I can't understand is how is it possible that the in 2020, on a new computer the search in the start menu can still lag??? What is this? There are menus in some linux desktop managers that haven't been lagging for decades, and the newest windows reliably takes 0.5s-3s for showing any results, upwards of…

How is it possible in 2020 a basic search of the start menu doesn't work? For example, I have Spotify installed, it appears in my start menu, but if I search for "Spotify" it's nowhere to be found.

https://i.imgur.com/y55C38B.jpg

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#246

Post by Frenchgeek »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #139
nolok wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

Sadly the current start menu is far from normal. Normal would a simple menuized view of a folder hierarchy, what we have is some abomination tied into the Windows Store in mysterious ways that cause it to break under a wide variety of circumstances in such a way that an in-place reinstall is the only sure-fire fix.

When I first saw win10's start menu, I promptly removed the tiles (ads, really) as useless fluff then promptly vowed to do everything I can to never use it. My desktop is a mess now, but one of my own doing.

(You can imagine what my reaction was when edgy auto-started after an update to tell me the over-engineered Firefox downloader was now "better" than ever. I had to kill the process in order to not see the mandatory new features tour. It did it again after the recent update to make sure I hate it as much as possible.)

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#247

Post by WorldMaker »

chrismorgan wrote: post #227
blauditore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. People were just not used to a full-screen, search-focused start menu. A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI. The next version was then a slightly milder version of it, and at the same time people had gotten used to it a bit, so most were happy with Windows 7 and are now h…

No, the Windows 8 Metro/Win32 split was simply an extremely bad design. I’ve been dealing with a few 8 machines recently, and it’s really, really bad. You want to get between the two worlds? Hope you know about Alt+Tab, because otherwise you’re probably not going to find out how to get there. Seriously. It’s that bad. Windows 8.1 made some improvements, so that users will probably be able to find their way from Win32…

The split made a lot of sense to tiling window manager fans. Admittedly a small niche to accidentally target a mainstream operating system to, so unsurprising it got so much bad press.

In 8 the tiling window manager and non-tiling window manager were separate worlds you switched between virtual desktop style. In 8.1 they made the entire non-tiling window manager desktop a "proper" tile. (In 10 they killed the tiling window manager.)

As a tiling window manager fan, it's easy to sometimes wish they'd gone down the other path in some AU 10 and "promoted" more Win32 applications to proper tiles in the tiling window manager, rather than "demote" all the tile capable apps to the chaos of traditional non-tiling window manager.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#248

Post by WorldMaker »

Joeri wrote: post #212
nolok wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

The frustrating part is that when you actually try to use windows 10 on a tablet in tablet mode you find out very quickly how bad it is as a tablet os because of a lot of paper cuts. That is microsoft in a nut shell: lack of following through. Take for example the fluent design, which by itself is a good design, but after three years is still not consistently applied in windows, let alone microsoft’s first party apps…

Arguably Microsoft would have had more time/energy to devote to bringing first party apps/components to Fluent Design if it didn't keep doing 270 degree turns in Windows 8. It's hard to follow through when customers keep backseat driving and yelling at you to swerve. (Whether or not those were the right decisions, and I'm not implying that listening to customers is necessarily a bad thing, just that you can't have your cake and eat it too: you can't complain that Microsoft didn't follow through on the straight path when you complain that they needed to swerve in the first place.)

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#249

Post by rightbyte »

gabagool wrote: post #238
mbesto wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I always install Classic Shell when I boot up a Win10 machine: http://classicshell.net/

FYI, Classic Shell is no longer under development: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8147 However, there is now Open Shell Menu which was created to replace it: https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/

Nice I will give it a try.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#250

Post by WorldMaker »

tgb wrote: post #168
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #74

Back when the system settings could be reached with less clicks, were organised in a logical way and didn't use most of the screen as white-space.

System settings were easiest in the Vista/7 era. Window Key+"sound" brought up sound settings, so you didn't need to know where they were placed in control panel. Now in Windows 10, doing the same brings up "Sound settings" which is a stripped-down settings bar barely more than a master volume setting. The actual sound settings are hidden in control panel, which doesn't come up when searching for 'sound'. This (broke…

In Windows 10 if I search for "sound" I see "Sound Control Panel" as the second or third option depending on which machine I tried. Accounts on both machines are opt-in "Dev Mode" so that may influence things, I believe "Dev Mode" turns on more old Control Panel items in search, as that is Microsoft's "Power User" opt-in.

Inside the Sound Settings I see almost all of the controls I expect to see from the Sound Control Panel, though they are broken into multiple pages in the way that the old Control Panel was broken into tabs. A lot of the Sound Control Panel is the Devices list, and there are multiple links to the "Manage Sound Devices" page that I see in Sound Settings. The link to the app-specific volume mixer is under Advanced Settings and labeled about you would expect "App volume and device preferences".

If that weren't enough I also see on Sound Settings as the second item down under "Related Settings" is "Sound Control Panel" to get back to the one you hoped for if you wind up searching and pulled up the wrong one from the one you preferred. (I don't think that is a Dev Mode thing and always is there.)

(Bonus: the best app-specific volume mixer in Windows 10 is the Audio widget in the modern multi-widget Xbox Game Bar which you pull up with Win+G or the Xbox "Home" button on Xbox controllers. If you've never used the Xbox Game Bar or remember only a flat single bar without a variety of widget windows, trying the new Xbox Game Bar is a good idea, even for people that don't necessarily use Windows for gaming some of the Widgets like Audio and Performance are generally useful and faster or as fast to access than their Task Manager or Settings equivalents. Of course, likely to be disabled by group policy on Enterprise systems; it's unfortunate when Power User tools are Gaming focused/branded.)

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