Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment • Hacker News Board

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#261

Post by richard_todd » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #189

richard_todd wrote: post #32

On the Windows side, isn't it a side-effect of the shift from standardized common controls to WPF that happened around the vista time-frame? It's much harder to provide consistent user theming against non-standard controls. Similarly, on the early web you could theme sites easily with your browser settings, but as theming power shifted to web developers with CSS, that capability melted away.

WPF controls are still system provided/standardized "common" controls, though. Up until recently (.NET Core 3) all WPF releases were still Windows releases. The issue isn't necessarily caused by the controls themselves or even the theming engine baked into WPF. Had Microsoft prioritized it, WPF might have had stronger system theming/retheming out of the box. It could have provided stronger design themes and more user…

I hear what you're saying, and I agree that MS could have done much more to allow consistent theming by the user. But, I also know that even a beginner WPF tutorial shows how to arbitrarily adjust controls with a resource dictionary. Meanwhile, I don't recall ever learning how to change the color of a win32/c++ button short of taking over the entire drawing responsibility (I'm sure it's possible but that's beside the point). So as a result of that emphasis, it seems to me a lot more WPF/UWP apps use arbitrary non-standard colors/fonts/highlights/animations, which would be completely at odds with user-selected themes. I know mine did, anyway, so I guess I was part of the problem!

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#262

Post by userbinator » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #123

wongarsu wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having just one widely used GUI toolkit would also help, something both Linux and Windows are struggling with (Windows especially, with Win32-style WPF vs Fluent-style UWP)

Also on Windows you’ve got WinForms and MFC and I think another C++ UI framework as well. Microsoft has switched their preferred UI framework every five years or so, often leaving behind the old framework in the dust when it comes to new UI paradigms they want people to adopt. So you’re kind of forced to roll your own if you’re stuck on a legacy framework but want your app to look modern. It’s a mess. Now they’re jus…

My choice, and it has stayed so for nearly 3 decades, is Win32. All the other bloaty trends just aren't really worth much to learn.

So you’re kind of forced to roll your own if you’re stuck on a legacy framework but want your app to look modern.

Perhaps "look modern" is not a good thing after all. Especially considering the discussion here.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#263

Post by bmn__ » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:00 AM UTC

indymike wrote: post #204

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…

The current KDE does a great job allowing for customization.

No, it is currently barely sufficient, certainly not great.

The scrollbar in System Settings is impossible to customise (through the GUI). Tray icons and log-off dialogue icons and the task bar appearance cannot quickly or easily customised because due to "theme"ing changing one thing also changes the other.

The maintainers screwed up and it was all downhill after version 3. Each major version introduced an incompatibility that meant that some users were forced to abandon, e.g. KDE Classic icons or window decorations BⅡ https://cdn.pling.com/img//hive/content-pre2/5965-2.png or Crystal https://cdn.pling.com/img//hive/content-pre1/13969-1.jpg

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#264

Post by bcrl » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

forgetfulness wrote: post #217

deckard1 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Theming was HUGE in Linux back in 2005-2010 Eh? Theming was fizzling out by 2005, which starts to correspond to the rise of OS X and Macbooks. Enlightenment came out in 1997 and was all about theming. But theming predated E by a few years already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightenment_(software) This is what I would call the "golden years" for Linux theming. Late '90s to early 2000s. > Windows look and feel w…

> Eh? Theming was fizzling out by 2005, which starts to correspond to the rise of OS X and Macbooks. I don't know man, it's what I saw as more and more people came to Ubuntu with Windows Vista flopping, and they came with expectations of a flashy UX and a dynamic growth of the platform. Lots of theming, lots of hopeful mockups and GTK+ struggling to support transparency as theming engines hacked it in, the race to in…

Enlightenment was awesome in the early 2000s, even having a translucent terminal feature. Then the Gnome project started giving the giant middle finger to their users and began removing all the features to use for customization. I remember the day when a Gnome update decided to change key bindings unannounced. Xchat flipped from Unix X11 key bindings to Windows bindings. The argument was that they were going after "Aunt Tilly", the mythical desktop Linux user who never actually appeared. This drove those of us who were developers away. I can't stand Gnome these days and use Openbox / xfce instead, 2 desktops that don't try to drive their users away. Sadly, Red Hat still funds Gnome primarily rather than the vibrant situation we had back then.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#265

Post by userbinator » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #159

thisisauserid wrote: post #114

I fun prank used to be setting someone's color scheme to black on black with black highlights. It didn't work as well on later versions of windows because the button highlights were always visible. In 3.1 you'd have to guess where the buttons even were.

How did you restore it, you monster?

Win3.x and 9x are based on DOS, so all you need to do is boot to a DOS prompt and edit CONTROL.INI (a text file) to change the colour scheme or its colours.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#266

Post by smilekzs » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

ant6n wrote: post #251

userbinator wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto-hiding elements are one of the worst trends in "modern" UIs. I've had countless times where I had to waste a lot of effort trying to find controls that were hidden and only appeared if you hovered for long enough in the right place. It reminds me of this amusing comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24965293

Late-appearing elements are really annoying as well. They like appear under your mouse the moment you want to click on something.

Can second this. UI elements should not suddenly shift in place, unless interacted with or clearly communicated in advance (think a traffic light going yellow then red).

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#267

Post by andrekandre » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

asiando wrote: post #244

kitsunesoba wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kaleidoscope is by far the best implementation of system theming I've used. A single file was responsible for the appearance of window chrome, window controls, control and text colors, fonts, desktop icons, cursor, text selection color, etc. Furthermore, the schemes were free to rearrange and reshape window chrome as the artist pleased, meaning it was possible to do things like have a titlebar on the bottom of the wi…

That reminds me, theming was possible in Tiger times too, but I don’t remember the name of the application.

themepark?

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#268

Post by qwerty456127 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

anthk wrote: post #133

qwerty456127 wrote: post #25

I wish there were real high-quality Linux and Windows themes imitating Windows 3.x, 98 and XP (and some other old OSes perhaps) realistically, not just "kind of like that". I would even pay money for such if I were satisfied. Ideally, they should also be easy to combine in different ways. E.g. I want Win3.11 pixel art icons, Win98 window&panel styles and WinXP non-antialiased fonts - these 3 things make me feel orgas…

https://b00merang.weebly.com/desktop-themes.html

Funny and sad: every single theme I checked says "KDE - No" (or just says it requires Gnome).

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#269

Post by userbinator » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

chungy wrote: post #224

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? Windows 10 themes are just wallpaper packs and a defined accent color. I assume you’re referring to UxStyle etc as used since Windows XP? That doesn’t involve loading any executable code (unless there’s an RCE vulnerability in the theme resource loader, I suppose) - patching the signature checks in UxTheme.dll isn’t that big a deal, imo.

Windows XP themes are PE binaries. They totally run executable code. This might even be the main reason that the operating system as-is only allowed themes signed by Microsoft.

They are PE binaries... that don't have any actual code, only resources. And there is a flag used with LoadLibraryEx, available since at least Win95, LOAD_LIBRARY_AS_DATAFILE, that tells the system to not attempt to execute code in the file (if present).

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#270

Post by andrewxdiamond » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #145

godot wrote: post #142

Here's one counterpoint, that doesn't necessarily argue against the author (I love Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 theming btw!) -- diminishing ownership of the computer experience over the years gave me one great benefit, that is I'm much less reliant/tethered to everything on my computer. Sure, it's not an effect of themes, for sure. It's everything from, code for all my personal projects are in a git repo somewhere onl…

That's mostly because computers got cheap. The diminishing ownership of ones's computer only makes your data more linked into your device and the device's manufacturer. We are lucky in that desktops are still free enough that this isn't a problem, but there is severe loss of data when one loses mobile devices, for example.

Is there? I’ve used both iOS and Android, and pretty much all of my data, pictures, contacts, chat history, etc, sync to some cloud by default.

Perhaps privacy centric individuals who disable the built-in backup systems would have a hard time, but the typical user goes with the defaults most of the time.