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Windows 96

windows96.net

21–30 of 332 posts

Re: Windows 96

#23

wow went to package manager, installed Half-Life Uplink, and it's playable.. and a Windows 95 emulator! lol

Sadly doom didn't work. I was able to pick a level but the slayer wasn't moving. Still really impressive.

Re: Windows 96

#24
post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

No, it's not nostalgia. Modern UI is simply horrible, user-hostile and non-intuitive.

Re: Windows 96

#26
Very nice work.

Not sure if it's the intended behavior, but when opening the start menu if "Programs" is clicked, the start menu closes as if an executable option was chosen instead.

Same case for the sub directories under this menu.

Re: Windows 96

#27
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think usability has to take a part on that. You can scan an interface of this fashion and be almost certain about what is a button, what is a scroll bar, what is a text input, etcetera. While with Windows 8+ the flat UI lets a huge space for ambiguity and causes a bigger cognitive load to the user, who is forced to tell things between flat rectangles and lines.

Consistency is boring, and HTML makes it entirely too easy to do entirely your own thing. The result is most modern designers are trying to make a design that wows people at a glance , which is often at odds with actual usability and discoverability. UI design is basically fashion now, with passing fads and everything. Conforming to any kind of standard makes you look dated. I wish we could somehow force people to us…

Not sure that's the real cause, given the satirical $STARTUP websites that all use the same bootstrap theme.

Re: Windows 96

#28
post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

Part of the reason why Mac OS 8 is so timeless. I could use it now if it had modern Apps and features.

I feel disgusted using Windows 10.

Re: Windows 96

#29
Pretty. :)

Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school.

For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible.

IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and finished the whole task during a very long Saturday and Sunday.

Re: Windows 96

#30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think usability has to take a part on that. You can scan an interface of this fashion and be almost certain about what is a button, what is a scroll bar, what is a text input, etcetera. While with Windows 8+ the flat UI lets a huge space for ambiguity and causes a bigger cognitive load to the user, who is forced to tell things between flat rectangles and lines.

Consistency is boring, and HTML makes it entirely too easy to do entirely your own thing. The result is most modern designers are trying to make a design that wows people at a glance , which is often at odds with actual usability and discoverability. UI design is basically fashion now, with passing fads and everything. Conforming to any kind of standard makes you look dated. I wish we could somehow force people to us…

I can't imagine Microsoft designers doing the mockups for Windows in HTML/CSS, but you bring an interesting point - how the web, which afaik at its very beginning was intended for text (and multimedia), eventually brought UIs.

And yes, on text you'd want a minimal UI. You don't see books with flashy things everywhere competing for your attention, maybe excepting kids' books.

My guess is that, as someone already pointed about design doing a full circle again in a few years, it already has happened in the web several times - plain text and 'brutalist' design, then the native UI controls that had to be used within web interfaces, then skeumorphic design to compensate for the native UI controls, then you could style those UI controls as you wished, then flattening all the design again because most of web is text.

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