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Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

hisham.hm

101–110 of 333 posts

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#101
Back in Windows 98 you could set your title bar to be a gradient between 2 colors. That used to be a fun way to customize your look.

How did we get into a world where 20 years later with Windows 10 you can't even set a dark title bar color because Windows will say "that color is not supported". There's a cut off when picking a custom color where if you go below a certain shade of darkness it denies you.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#102
I remember I used to customize my desktop a lot. Then I started moving, from Windows 3 to 95, then some Solaris with OpenWindows, then CDE and it all got a little bit boring. These days the only thing I change is the overall theme to "dark" and that's it.

I'm happy I don't do that anymore.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#103
post #75
post #59

> In the old days of Windows 3.1, it was common to walk into an office and see each person’s desktop colors, fonts and wallpapers tuned to their personalities, just like their physical desk, with one’s family portrait or plants. Author (and many commenters here) take as a given that this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. Starting with the physical desk metaphor - you probably have trinkets and photos and whatnot,…

>you're almost certainly better off using the consensus interface; and if it has problems, contributing the fixes for those problems back to everyone This is usually impossible, because UI designers' goals are not your goals. Designers optimize for distinctiveness ("branding") and good first impressions from inexperienced users. This results in anti-features like low contrast text, excessive whitespace, and mandatory…

I don't agree that all designers do this; but it's certainly common. Are you extending that criticism to the designers of respected professional tools like Photoshop, Logic, Final Cut, MS Word, etc? Those are products refined over years using the feedback of thousands of professionals. If I walk into a recording studio you decided you don't like red clip meters... if I sit down in your airplane and you've flipped the rudder pedals with the stick... I mean... there are standards and standards are good and the more good standards we have the better off we all are.

I'm using one of those few remaining systems that you mentioned. But even on OS X I don't find it "impossible" to use the standard interface.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#104
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious - have you experimented with the range of accessibility options in Mac OS? Are there particular ones that are missing when it comes to dyslexia?

I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. I just feel that being able to change colors and fonts is a significantly broader and more simple solution than bespoke accessibility features tuned for specific disabilities.

> I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned.

So what I'm understanding is you're saying an OS that is used by a LOT of people, is inaccessible, but you neither have any of the disabilities nor the OS you're complaining about to back this claim up?

Because macOS has tons of accessibility options including font sizes, etc.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#105

Unpopular opinion: optimising for "branding" is what killed theming. Everyone wants to have their own custom colour theme, brand-associated font or button style, which clashes with uniformity of system controls. If everyone renders buttons in a custom way, they bypass the native, theming-capable, accessible-by-default system controls. As long as product managers are happy, it doesn't matter that users aren't.

I remember when office came out late 90s with the custom DLL to make everything grey and 3d looking instead of white. It was cool, but yeah breaks the consistent theme.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#106
I have a small b2c business and one of our key differentiators is the customizability. Users LOVE to turn stuff on and off and customize fonts, colors, and every bit to their liking. Sure it makes bugs and some users post ugly screenshots, but there’s definitely still value there that users recognize.

I’ve also noticed that surprisingly many of my friends have changed their Gmail theme.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. I just feel that being able to change colors and fonts is a significantly broader and more simple solution than bespoke accessibility features tuned for specific disabilities.

> I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. So what I'm understanding is you're saying an OS that is used by a LOT of people, is inaccessible, but you neither have any of the disabilities nor the OS you're complaining about to back this claim up? Because macOS has tons of accessibility options including font sizes, etc.

I never claimed MacOS was inaccessible. I don't even use MacOS, and haven't since about 10.1. I don't believe I've made any claims about MacOS at all, actually.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't run MacOS on any of the PCs I own, so no. Neither do I have any of the disabilities mentioned. So what I'm understanding is you're saying an OS that is used by a LOT of people, is inaccessible, but you neither have any of the disabilities nor the OS you're complaining about to back this claim up? Because macOS has tons of accessibility options including font sizes, etc.

I never claimed MacOS was inaccessible. I don't even use MacOS, and haven't since about 10.1. I don't believe I've made any claims about MacOS at all, actually.

macOS or Windows. Both are leading operating systems and are both very accessible.

You're ranting and raving for absolute zero reason at all. You have no facts to back up your claims nor any actual experience.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#109

This seems to fly directly against recently articles about the massive uptick in iOS customisation after 14 launched. The #ios14homescreen hashtag on Twitter seems extremely popular: https://twitter.com/hashtag/ios14homescreen

I remember having lots of fun with cheesy widgets like that on my first Android phone in 2011, nice to see the iOS folks catching on. Always thought that they were missing out!

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#110
post #99

I want Linux-like anarchy^H^H^Hthemability on Windows and macOS. I'm not keen on tweaking the appearance of every little button, but I want to go 'theme-shopping' from time to time and change the appearance of my desktop. Just to make it look a bit different now and then. It's interesting that the most slick and stylish desktops are now on Linux (of course there's 99% trash, but the remaining 1% are a lot more aesthe…

> of course there's 99% trash I'm offended. 99% of the number of desktop environments, or the installation, or the stylized installations? As with everything artistic, the last is a matter of taste, and the more opinionated a visual design is, the more you are likely to disagree with it. For the rest, please give names.. I've seen magnificients {i3, sway, KDE, GNOME, XFCE, cinnamon, etc}. ricing is a popular sport.

When you look through the themes on sites like https://www.gnome-look.org/browse/cat/135/ord/rating/, sort by rating and then skip the first few result pages, most of those themes don't look that "great". I don't understand how that's offending though, it's a normal quality distribution (also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law)
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