These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs.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.
I predict we're going to come full circle in ~10 years.
It’s been 25, and we haven’t.
Windows 96
31–40 of 332 posts
Re: Windows 96
#32That fucking chat holy hell. Do not let HN members lose like that.
Re: Windows 96
#33This is snappier running in my browser than my actual OS shell. Ahh, I miss the simpler days of computing.
Re: Windows 96
#34These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs.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.
Gotta give it up to the creator of this - the UI is very snappy. Well done!
I don't remember my experiences on an old Pentium-class processor being the same (except for that old work machine with a dual-proc. NT on a dualie was quite nice for the late 90s)
Re: Windows 96
#35Pretty. :) 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…
I remember those floppies... The 8th disk was kinda finicky on older hardware. I think that's where the installer actually tried to switch from DOS to Windows mode. If it failed for whatever reason, you had to start again from the 1st disk.
Re: Windows 96
#36Windows NT 4 was the pinnacle of usability (and sanity).
Re: Windows 96
#37"Internet Exploder", lol. Nice easter egg.
Re: Windows 96
#38These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs.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.
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.
> 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.
Bingo. This is exactly it for me, right here. Being able to tell what I can click on and expect it to do something, at a glance and without having to guess is the killer feature, IMO. How did we lose our way so badly that "can I click on this thing?" even became a reasonable question to ask of a modern UI?
Re: Windows 96
#39Re: Windows 96
#40test comment