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98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

jdan.github.io

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Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#21

Post by girvo »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #11
girvo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, because I don’t remember: does Windows 98? I know you could edit the theme around to set the UI scheme colours to a darker one, but as a kid I could never make it look nice

There were preset themes. Some were dark.

They certainly weren’t really a “dark mode” in the modern usage though I thought, they had ridiculously high contrast still around parts of it?

I don’t remember any of those dark presets being that dark either except for the High Contrast one — but this is going to drive me nuts all day now so I’m going to dig through a Win98 VM and see what I can find!

If there’s one that’s a good fit, might be a fun pull request to write for this project :)

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#22

Post by tomxor »

alberth wrote: post #5

I give this a “10” on the UI usability scorecard.

Totally agree.

Unix Motif, Windows 3/95/98, Classic MacOS... they were all highly usable. I crave the relentlessly, unashamed, unambiguousness of these old UIs, compared to modern UI which has devolved into something just as pretentious as the much hated skeuomorphism stage, only at the other end of the spectrum: extreme aesthetic minimalism at all cost (the user's cost).

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#24

Post by raydiatian »

pshirshov wrote: post #6

Cool. Does not support dark mode though.

DarkReader extension (available on all browsers) makes everything have DarkMode. Unless you’re visiting a website designed by loving sadists, then you’ll need a welding helmet.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#25

Post by prezjordan »

Hey HN - author here.

This was my burnout recovery project in April of 2020. Very much a labor of love and a surprising way to realize I still liked programming. I wrote some scattered thoughts here [0]

I also "run" this project quite differently than I usually do - when I receive a pull request instead of merging it I do a quick glance through the user's github to make sure they're not a spammer before giving them _commit access_ and asking them to merge their own PR [1]. It has worked wonders.

[0]: https://notes.jordanscales.com/ffa53b57

[1]: https://twitter.com/jdan/status/1528026508564078593

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#27

Post by metadat »

MisterTea wrote: post #14
girvo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, because I don’t remember: does Windows 98? I know you could edit the theme around to set the UI scheme colours to a darker one, but as a kid I could never make it look nice

I do remember a high contrast mode. Quite garish with white text on black background with bright blues and I think yellow and red too. I think this might be it: https://never-obsolete.tumblr.com/post/180144131029/high-con... edit: yellow and red is from win 3.1's hotdog mode: https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-windows-31-ho...

Speaking of yellow and red .. don't forget the noteworthy and stunning specimen, HotDog Linux.

https://hotdoglinux.com/

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#30

Post by int_19h »

grenoire wrote: post #3

Honestly full-assed implementation. Font hinting is a bit odd with a green sheen on Firefox Win 10...

There are some minor discrepancies. Window titlebars weren't gradient in Win98 - that came in Win2k and WinME. The combobox dropdown has rounded ages (Win11 + Edge) and there's a gap between it and the textbox. The tree view has different widths for "+" and "-" on the nodes, and neither is properly aligned with the dotted lines of the tree.

The biggest giveaway, though, is that you can drag to highlight text pretty much anywhere.

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