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Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

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Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#71

Post by exiguus »

myself248 wrote: post #57
exiguus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean exactly? Like the Menu-Issues in Windows 10? Because from a UX perspective, basically nothing has change. UI of course, but UX is the same like in the 90's following "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. I think its more about the change management, expectations. For example in Win XP you had the option to use the NT theme. As a user: "I can decide when to move on to the new design." Usually a…

Like making window borders 1px wide, even as screen pixel density increases. It's darn near impossible to resize a window anymore. Like making buttons auto-hide unless you mouse-over them. I don't remember when this came in, but the default PDF viewer in something did this, and I spent _weeks_ being baffled that some jerk made a PDF viewer that couldn't zoom in on the page, until I randomly waggled the mouse for some…

I agree, thats bad. And for example the "icon only" thing follows a bad but hip UI pattern where designers assume the knowledge of the icon meaning of the user. They should not in my opinion. I mean, in the end, you can decide. 1. To learn all this new patterns in windows. or 2. Move on to another, more stable window environment like gnome or KDE or whatever. In the end, its all about the effort for now and on the long run. And you get forced to calculate that because of the introduced change.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#72

Post by cosmic_cheese »

p_l wrote: post #68
zamadatix wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree macOS surfaces much less functionality but I feel like it's more "because they don't want you to feel like there is a choice to make in the first place" rather than "because the defaults are ideal for everyone". Over time it feels like "layers of menus" have definitely made their way into Apple's software anyways. The replacement to the registry seems to half be "magic CLI incantations for settings which ca…

And the defaults system is just registry by another name

Not really, defaults are stored in per-application plist files rather than in a singular database.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#73

Post by InsideOutSanta »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #58
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the desktop operating systems of that era were at a sweet spot. They were technically advanced enough to render good-looking, crisp color user interfaces. However, most people were still novices at using computers, so OS designers consciously designed their operating systems to be as clear as possible. Applications tended to be written for each individual platform and to follow its UI guidelines. Windows 95,…

An aspect of System 7/Mac OS 8/9 that I find criminally underrated is how flexible it is. For those versions, a good bulk of the “system” isn’t part of the system proper but instead implemented by way of extensions and control panels loaded at startup. The OS itself is extremely minimal, basically just enough to provide a barebones desktop and act as a substrate for apps to run on. Everything else, including “core” f…

I remember creating different extension sets using the built-in Extension Manager and the third-party tool Conflict Catcher. I had sets for gaming, video editing, and normal usage. It was a simple matter of selecting the correct set and rebooting. Or you could hit shift on startup and start into a minimal system without any extensions.

There's a good reason the third-party extension manager was called "Conflict Catcher," but the power and flexibility such a system grants users is unmatched.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#74

Post by zozbot234 »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #70
wobfan wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually would think less of this as a look back into the past but hopefully as a real alternative to the current DEs, which obviously then needs to have high res fonts. That would be nice.

I wouldn't say that's so "obvious". I for one would prefer the original pixel fonts, but size adjusted to fit my screen density. By hand, if required.

If we're talking Windows 9x, the "original fonts" could also be TrueType, hence arbitrarily resized. Yes, the original Windows 95 included a pixel font for the UI but then TrueType fonts like Verdana and Tahoma were added soon after that and were commonly used.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#75

Post by exiguus »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #65
exiguus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean exactly? Like the Menu-Issues in Windows 10? Because from a UX perspective, basically nothing has change. UI of course, but UX is the same like in the 90's following "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. I think its more about the change management, expectations. For example in Win XP you had the option to use the NT theme. As a user: "I can decide when to move on to the new design." Usually a…

I'm sorry, but absolutely no. Fuck no. Nothing from Microsoft has even been in the same building as a copy of "The Design of Everyday Things", or as a copy of any old-school UX book from before UX meant "Electron". UX is just as much about the "how" as it is about the "what", and Microsoft has been failing everyone lately on this count.

Thats not true. For example simple stuff like Toggles to the hole Windows management is derived from that. IMO the huge change in Windows 11 is how the Menu, App Starter and so on works (if you use the mouse).

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#76

Post by pwython »

fallsoffbikes wrote: post #24
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah as far as GUIs go, Win95 isn't in the "nostalgia" category for me, I was already well into adulthood. I kind of get the appeal, but it's also unnecessarily skeumorphic/fake-3d and there were some UX things that made little sense especially lumping all the window controls all together (including the destructive "close" X) where MacOS smartly separated them.

Though Apple has forgotten or ignored this in products like the Apple tv where restart and factory reset are right next to each other.

Especially when you're using that tiny trackpad remote. Overall, Apple TV works, but most of the apps UX suck, and that's not Apple's fault.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#77

Post by zozbot234 »

exiguus wrote: post #71
myself248 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like making window borders 1px wide, even as screen pixel density increases. It's darn near impossible to resize a window anymore. Like making buttons auto-hide unless you mouse-over them. I don't remember when this came in, but the default PDF viewer in something did this, and I spent _weeks_ being baffled that some jerk made a PDF viewer that couldn't zoom in on the page, until I randomly waggled the mouse for some…

I agree, thats bad. And for example the "icon only" thing follows a bad but hip UI pattern where designers assume the knowledge of the icon meaning of the user. They should not in my opinion. I mean, in the end, you can decide. 1. To learn all this new patterns in windows. or 2. Move on to another, more stable window environment like gnome or KDE or whatever. In the end, its all about the effort for now and on the lo…

The 'icon only' thing is less of a problem when you can hover your mouse pointer on the icon and get a tooltip that tells you what it's for.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#78

Post by qwertox »

`/var/home/afidel/`

There are some pretty good desktop environments for Linux which emulate the Windows desktop, so that old Windows users would feel at home immediately.

But I've never seen them emulate the filesystem, which is what took most old Windows users the biggest effort to understand. And the Linux filesystem raises it to a new level of complexity, which makes every old Windows users want to go back to Windows immediately.

With "old" users I don't mean experienced users.

Is there some kind of overlay which does all this `C:\User\afidel\Desktop` mapping for those users?

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#79

Post by exiguus »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #63
exiguus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, the main difference of MacOS and Windows is, that Windows allow drivers from 3rd-party. MacOS does not. Drivers means also hardware. So you can build your own PC. Same as with Linux. This is the Apple secret of success IMO. No 3rd-party drivers and hardware, means, it will just work and no one will blame you for stuff 3rd-parties messed up. But its also like: There is only a red and blue t-shirt. Choose. No…

macOS allows third-party drivers too, Apple just wants vendors to write them in userspace rather than kernelspace. That’s probably not the worst thing, because proprietary driver code is notoriously shoddy and should be run somewhere that limits the blast radius.

Sure, i think the userspace restriction is also the reason, that nearly no 3rd-party hardware for Mac exist.

Re: Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

#80

Post by ranger_danger »

rikthevik wrote: post #67
ranger_danger wrote: post #56

Why are recreations of old UIs always differently wrong? Is pixel-perfection too much to ask for?

Well, it is difficult and a lot of work. Maybe _you_ can help.

I have made pixel-perfect renditions before, but I would be worried to release them for fear of legal problems.
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