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Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

hisham.hm

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Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#231

Post by TeMPOraL »

RedShift1 wrote: post #191
deathanatos wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps partly, but the UI was also useful compared to WMP. WMP was slow, bulky, and took up lots of screen real estate. WinAmp, while it was themed, was slim , but also packed far more control into a tinier space than WMP. (The blue/grey theme that came later was far less performant; I mean the original dark green/black theme.) And WinAmp would open & play literally any format under the sun. WMP was limited to somet…

WMP plays anything the system has a codec for.

Ah, codecs. The biggest PITA on Windows in the 1990s/2000s. I went through two or three different videoplayers for the sole reason they shipped with whatever was needed to open just about any format out there. Meanwhile, trying to coerce WMP to open popular video formats was an exercise in futility...

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#232

Post by [deleted] »

InvisibleUp wrote: post #122
selfhoster11 wrote: post #36

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.

This MSDN article (which starts by recounting a day in 1995) backs your theory up: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/ms364048(...

[deleted]

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#233

Post by sildur »

fouric wrote: post #183
sildur wrote: post #170

> But then I realized how much I struggled to get my Android UI the way I wanted, until I installed Nova Launcher that gave me Linux-levels of tweaking. The average user does not do this. No. Stop, please stop with the paternalism. I cringe every time someone talks about "the user" in third person, like they were laboratory specimens. We all are mostly average users. There is not really any difference between your fa…

I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. > We all are mostly average users. If by "we" you mean the population of HN - that is blatantly false. The average HN user is far more technically sophisticated than the average computer/phone user. >> The average user does not do this. This is completely true, and not "paternalistic" in the least - it's a statement of fact. > There is not really any difference…

> If by "we" you mean the population of HN - that is blatantly false. The average HN user is far more technically sophisticated than the average computer/phone user.

Elitism, again.

> This is completely true, and not "paternalistic" in the least - it's a statement of fact.

Backed by nothing.

> Absolutely false. My father, as do most of the fathers I know, are profoundly disinterested in customization and learning more about their devices - even after I show them some of the stuff that they could do, and offer to teach them. It's simply not interesting to them - they want to do workworking, or something.

They want to do workworking or something... Honestly, that sounds quite dismissive. Hopefully your teaching offer was slightly more humble than that...

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#234

Post by rdiddly »

jart wrote: post #185
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #175

Good Lord, just give me control over the appearance of scrollbars again. Was there some international UI/UX meeting where they declared a holy war on scrollbars? Seems like everyone is trying to make them disappear like they're an embarrassing and unwelcome distant relative they're passive aggressively trying to make go away.

What is the use case for scroll bars, now that we have mouse wheels? Progress indication? My view is that content is king and any UI element that needlessly takes away space from the content needs to be destroyed.

Scroll bars are a position getter and setter.

Content is king, but kings have all sorts of people supporting them. In fact you can immediately tell who's the king not by how solitary and unencumbered he is but by how much clutter and commotion and how many attendants are around him. I realize I'm pushing the analogy too far.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#235

Post by anigbrowl »

deckard1 wrote: post #212
jonpurdy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Technical PM, I fought against a former boss when they wanted to forego native controls because they wanted their app to be branded, because without a custom look they felt that their app would not be unique and memorable. If an app can't survive on its usefulness alone, it probably shouldn't exist. As a user, if an app doesn't have a native UI, I disregard it unless I need it for a specific and mandatory use.

> As a user, if an app doesn't have a native UI, I disregard it I disagree rather strongly with this. You should use the UI elements that make sense. It doesn't make sense for Maya or Blender or Photoshop to constrain themselves to whatever Microsoft picked out for them to use. The palette of native widgets and native UX methods is woeful across all systems. It's constrained to the set of generic elements which are a…

Arguably it's woeful because everyone goes off and does their own thing rather than having any notion of a shareable commons.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#236

Post by fl0wenol »

nitrogen wrote: post #162
grawprog wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this discussion got me thinking. I've been using KDE now for years specifically because every part of it can be customized, but for the most part, i've used the same theme and configurations now for pretty much the entire time i've been using kde. I still think it comes down to branding though, even with those totally customizable environments. The difference is, it's not someone else's brand. I get to turn m…

the ability to remove someone else's brand from my computer and replace it with my own. In Windows 2000 and earlier, before system file protection, it was possible to use a resource editor and/or a specially crafted BMP file to change system icons, boot animations, start menu imagery, login screen, etc. With a hex editor you could change any UI text, too. I had a heavily customized W2K alongside my heavily customized…

I remember doing the same for Windows 2003. Got a little more difficult with the theme engine and having to use cmd shells running as SYSTEM but the end results were so satisfying. Sigh

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#238

Post by eikenberry »

bsdubernerd wrote: post #98
forgetfulness wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theming was HUGE in Linux back in 2005-2010, consistency was paramount, adherence to toolkit was extremely important just like Apple claimed. For Apple it was about delivering a consistent branded experience, for the GNOME and KDE communities it was about being able to consistently customize the experience. In Windows? Always a free-for-all of such heavy customization on the side of the third-party applications that…

I agree that theming was much more consistent a decade ago in linux-land. GTK2 + QT with GTK2-style would get you an almost seamless experience. The "dark or light" theme we have today is an absolute joke by comparison. Many Gtk-engines were also much faster in terms of pure rendering speed. Another issue as mentioned is that per-control CSS skinning breaks easily with custom themes. Instead of using system colors de…

I'm not sure why you're talking about Gtk/QT theming in the past tense, it all still works the same way with modern versions of Gtk/QT.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#240

Post by wolrah »

crysin wrote: post #227
inetknght wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Scroolbars are useful for making large coarse leaps within a page in an instant, while scroll wheels are good for accurate positioning over short distances. That's funny. I use them in the exact opposite way. When I want exact positioning then I will use the scrollbar. When I want to scroll past pages and pages, I will just fling the scrollwheel.

I think it's dependent on your mouse too. Personally I only use mice that have a click wheel, I absolutely hate free-spinning scroll wheels.

IMO the best mice ever are the Logitech MX Revolution and MX Master series that have an electronic clutch on the wheel. It's clicky by default but if you whip it the clutch unlocks and you can traverse an entire EULA in 0.6 seconds.

Some of their newer gaming mice have a half-ass version of this as well with a manual mechanical toggle.

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