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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

#71

Post by chillfox »

massung wrote: post #9
raydiatian wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can Microsoft sue for something like this? Ethically I don’t think they should. But, can they?

IANAL, but I think not. I think this because there have been a plethora of tools and libraries over the decades (think Tk, WxWidgets, and similar) that emulate the native look-and-feel of the OS and I believe a company has to defend it's IP/copyrights otherwise it implicitly loses the ability to do so in the future. See: https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/enforce-your-intellectual... Consequently, this is why compani…

Trademark requires defense or it can be challenged. Copyright requires no such active defense to maintain and can be enforced selectively.

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

#72

Post by chillfox »

whatwhatwhat_ wrote: post #66
atoav wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that for some people that terrible operating system might have been the first system the have ever used, maybe as a kid. I (an avid linux user who spends more time in the terminal than on a UI) certainly recall that my first contact with any computer with a keyboard was Windows 95. It was a complete mystery to me. The fascination that unexplainable object had on a 7 year old certainly had an effect on my lif…

Well alright, but I was tech support for many Windows 98 users back in the day and wow did I hate microsoft. It was such a ridiculous mess, like a house of cards. Fix one thing and another broke, cryptic dll packs when installed fixed some problems then needed patching again and again and again. And everyone blamed tech support. We were incompetent, the software came from god. fml I hate that os

Everyone still blames tech support for everything and I think that will likely continue indefinitely regardless of correctness and quality of software.

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

#73

Post by chillfox »

atoav wrote: post #33
whatwhatwhat_ wrote: post #13

why would anyone want to resurrect that terrible operating system? that’s the bar with which crappy software is measured against

Consider that for some people that terrible operating system might have been the first system the have ever used, maybe as a kid. I (an avid linux user who spends more time in the terminal than on a UI) certainly recall that my first contact with any computer with a keyboard was Windows 95. It was a complete mystery to me. The fascination that unexplainable object had on a 7 year old certainly had an effect on my lif…

First computer I used was running Dos and Windows 3.1.

But my favorite Windows version is XP, I was doing service desk / junior sysadmin at the time and XP was just so easy to work with. You could fix a lot of problems by simply editing the registry or files in the windows folder directly and you could re-image a machine in about 2 minutes. The control panel was really easy to navigate and consistent.

I really wish XP was still supported.

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

#74

Post by spookie »

josephg wrote: post #56
zozbot234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the SerenityOS design choices. Looks pretty much like a 2001-or-so UI, but adopting more modern design elements (such as, e.g. breadcrumb navigation widgets) where they actually make sense.

I adore the design language of Haiku / BeOS for the same reason.

Honestly, I wish I could make Haiku my daily OS. Not quite there yet though.

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

#76

Post by kreativ_py »

gernb wrote: post #62
puttycat wrote: post #50

Beautiful. It’s crazy to see this and realize how much current Windows is unusable. I haven’t used Windows in ~10 years and every time I see the current interface I can’t believe someone is able to use it without losing their mind.

Just curious but in what ways? Me, I used Windows for years until ~2008. In 2008 I started using both Mac and Windows. In 2010 I started using Linux, Mac, and Windows. I never really found one better than another. Each one had their strengths, none of them had huge UI issue for me at least. For example, one plus I find on Windows vs MacOS is I use Chrome with multiple profiles. Windows is able to display an icon per…

For me the taskbar in W11 is a giant step back, all windows are collapsed into a group. No idea why they removed the ability to keep them expanded other than trying to mimic the look of OSX

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

#77

Post by duskwuff »

tomxor wrote: post #22
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).

Classic Mac OS in what era?

The System 7 UI toolkit was underdeveloped, and forced a lot of applications to roll their own controls (with mixed success). The System 8 "Platinum" appearance mostly resolved that, though; I'd point to that as an excellent design for the era.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

int_19h wrote: post #30
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 m…

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by buryat »

puttycat wrote: post #50

Beautiful. It’s crazy to see this and realize how much current Windows is unusable. I haven’t used Windows in ~10 years and every time I see the current interface I can’t believe someone is able to use it without losing their mind.

if you havent used in 10 years how can you judge the usability objectively?
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