Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment • Hacker News Board

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#281

Post by mekkkkkk » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

CodeGlitch wrote: post #143

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.

I believe Winamp became so popular because it had such a unique UI, that was also incredibly customizable. Compare that to Windows media player at the time... On the flip side I want me email client, my desktop authoring tools and admin tools to all look and act the same.

The Winamp (classic) skinning was so brutally effective, considering how simple they were. AFAIK the bulk of the skin consisted of two or three .bmp-files which were spritesheet for all controls and fonts. Literally anyone could make one with a tiny bit of effort.

Now that screen resolutions vary quite a bit I suppose it wouldn't work as well as when all monitors were mediocre 800x600 or glorious high res 1024x768. Ah, the nostalgia.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#282

Post by shard » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

ryanjshaw wrote: post #214

indymike wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Position of elevator (the little thumb you traditionally drag up or down) shows where I'm at relative to the beginning and end of the content. 2. Size of elevator in relation to the scrollbar tells me what percentage of the content is viewable (except when the size of the elevator becomes so small it makes it unusable). 3. Up and down buttons allow a simple way to bring the next or previous item into view. A lot o…

Don't forget the near religious debate that is scrollbar snapback: skim a document backwards to review an earlier point, or forwards to determine if it's worth further time investment, and then release the mouse button outside the scroll area so that you can snapback and continue where you left off.

Where is this feature available or implemented? I just tried in Chrome and Powerpoint, neither has this feature.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#283

Post by Arainach » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #273

nickjj wrote: post #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.

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". What's worse, early versions of Win10 didn't even let you set the colour of titlebars at all! https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-restore-color-to-the-titl... Presumably it was only put back after massive outrage, which then begs the question of why they eve…

A "consistent design language". The developers who worked on the feature argued against it (among other things it was almost impossible to tell which window was active since "Black on White" isn't easily distinguishable from "Gray on white"). Selfhost feedback said the same thing. It didn't matter - the designers had their mocks, the PMs sided with them, and that was how it shipped.

The public response was entirely predictable (for "not being the target customer", it turns out that we knew how they think pretty well) and soon enough we added a toggle for color and APIs to control title bar colors back in TH1.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#284

Post by kitsunesoba » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 2:26 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.

There were a few different programs for that, but probably the most popular was Unsanity's Shapeshifter, which allowed theming without replacing any system files (it instead hooked app launches and patched those files in memory).

Those themes were pretty good, but suffered some significant limitations, especially with dark themes and carbon apps. The best OS X themes really looked great though, since they supported full color and alpha.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#285

Post by amlib » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

core-questions wrote: post #178

CodeGlitch wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Winamp became so popular because it had such a unique UI, that was also incredibly customizable. Compare that to Windows media player at the time... On the flip side I want me email client, my desktop authoring tools and admin tools to all look and act the same.

> I believe Winamp became so popular because it had such a unique UI Well, yes and no. Remember, Windows Media player used to be this: https://www.windows-media-player.com/wp-content/uploads/2019... and without system-installed codecs, which were hard to come by for something like MP3 files, it was basically useless; you could play MIDI files through your shitty OPL-3 FM synth and that's about it. Winamp came with a…

To corroborate your point, I loved fiddling with the Enhancer plugin:

https://i.imgur.com/DuxpATX.gif

It's what started my desire for better sound quality, pursuing better equipment and assembling my own crazy dsp stacks in order to... well, enhance sound quality, which I do to this day!

Dealing with equalizers, dynamics processors, crossover, convolvers/IR, applying hrtf/hrir found on the net, using room eq wizard to try and improve speaker/room response, buying a damn binaural microphone so I could make my own ears impulse responses... I ended up learning a lot about the subject, form such a tiny "seed"

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#286

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #278

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #193

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. But please. just stop making everything flat ffs. On the GUIs of old, you knew straight away what you could interact with, while now, everything is so flat or hidden away that everything blends together, I have no idea what I can click on and what's static unless…

> Also, please stop with the auto-hiding bs. Sometimes I have to do a brute force sweep of the GUI with the cursor to trigger some elements to pop up from where they were hiding. WTF?! This would have made more sense 20-30 years ago when displays were running at 640x480 so real estate was precious, but now FullHD is the entry level norm. Your vision probably is correct in most of the cases as people just misuse this,…

Screen space has became more abundant but human attention capacity has not (perhaps it even decreased)

Try me.

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#287

Post by xtat » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

godshatter wrote: post #166

I'm irrationally missing the hotdog stand Windows 3.1 theme. I use KDE at home and will occasionally try a different theme or cursor set when the mood strikes me. But that's the linux way. You're free to customize to a crazy extent. Once you get it setup the way you like it, you can achieve some nice workflow enhancements.

came here to ctrl-f hotdog stand :)

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#288

Post by kitsunesoba » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #230

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mac setting does not seem to work for all applications.

Right, anything that's just mimicking the default without checking this setting is going to be stuck. Also anything more custom, like websites that override scroll behavior.

Website scrollbars can probably be fixed with a userstyle and the Stylus extension, but with apps using electron or other non-system UI library you're just stuck with mimic-scrollbars (though there are exceptions like Qt which does honor scrollbar settings).

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#289

Post by smichel17 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

wolrah wrote: post #240

crysin wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see your 0.6seconds and raise 0.2 seconds for my key ;)

Re: Remembering Windows 3.1 themes and user empowerment

#290

Post by smichel17 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 4:03 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #278

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #193

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. But please. just stop making everything flat ffs. On the GUIs of old, you knew straight away what you could interact with, while now, everything is so flat or hidden away that everything blends together, I have no idea what I can click on and what's static unless…

> Also, please stop with the auto-hiding bs. Sometimes I have to do a brute force sweep of the GUI with the cursor to trigger some elements to pop up from where they were hiding. WTF?! This would have made more sense 20-30 years ago when displays were running at 640x480 so real estate was precious, but now FullHD is the entry level norm. Your vision probably is correct in most of the cases as people just misuse this,…

I would maybe buy this, except that

1. Back when scroll bars were fixed width and consistent across all applications, I would instinctively tune them out when I wasn't using them; I don't need the application to do that for me.

2. More importantly, many websites are adding some kind of progress indicator on the page itself (perhaps because the scroll bars are no longer obvious enough?). These are way more in-your-face than the scroll bars of yore.