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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

#111

Post by teamonkey »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #96

Three modern desktop environments that I use: - Windows 10/11. Especially in 11, it's easiest just to type the start of an app's name into the search box. As opposed to the two clicks it takes to get to the "traditional" menu where you still have to scroll to find it. - Gnome (only on fresh Linux installs, usually replaced with Mate pretty soon). Has a smartphone-style app grid, but here, too, its quickest just to ty…

How do you get Windows to launch an installed app after you type the first few letters, instead of searching the web with Edge and Bing?

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

#112

Post by Tade0 »

mananaysiempre wrote: post #36
metadat wrote: post #5

This looks nice and easy to use. My hypothesis is today's "modern" OS user interfaces are objectively worse from a usability perspective, obfuscating key functionality behind layers of confusing menus. It reminds me of these "OS popularity since the 70s" time lapse views: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cTKhqtll5cQ The dominance of Windows is crazy, even today, Mac desktops and laptops are comparatively niche

> This looks nice These kinds of things almost always give me an uncanny-valley feeling. Here I'm looking at the screenshot and can’t help noticing that the taskbar buttons are too close to the taskbar’s edge, the window titles are too narrow, the folders are too yellow, and so on and so forth. (To its credit, Wine is the one exception that is not susceptible to this, even when configured to use a higher DPI value so…

To be fair at least the title bar height was configurable and I recall at least one original Windows theme taking advantage of that.

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

#113

Post by hn92726819 »

teamonkey wrote: post #111
MarkusWandel wrote: post #96

Three modern desktop environments that I use: - Windows 10/11. Especially in 11, it's easiest just to type the start of an app's name into the search box. As opposed to the two clicks it takes to get to the "traditional" menu where you still have to scroll to find it. - Gnome (only on fresh Linux installs, usually replaced with Mate pretty soon). Has a smartphone-style app grid, but here, too, its quickest just to ty…

How do you get Windows to launch an installed app after you type the first few letters, instead of searching the web with Edge and Bing?

You can download openshell and it will replace the start menu from the start menu from whatever era you want (XP, 7, 8, I think 10 too). It's open source as well

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

#114

Post by wlesieutre »

hakfoo wrote: post #110
charcircuit wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they look the way they do because it works good In modern times telemetry can show how well new designs work. The industry never forgot how to measure and do user research for ui changes. We've only gotten better at it.

Just because they're measuring doesn't mean they're measuring the same things as before. The goal in 1995 might be "The user can launch the text editor, add three lines to a file, and save it from a fresh booted desktop within 2 minutes". The goal in 2015 might be "we can get them from a bare desktop to signing up for a value-add service within 2 minutes" I'd actually be interested if there's a lot of "regression tes…

With so many things being ad-funded, I always wonder if what they're optimizing for is "it took the user 50% longer to complete a task"

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

#115

Post by anthk »

esafak wrote: post #22
anthk wrote: post #7

It needs the BSOD screensaver from XScreensaver, for sure. And, maybe, DOSBox-X or DOSEmu2. Also: - Pan - Sylpheed - Audacious with the WinAMP theme - Hexchat kinda has a MIRC vibe - Parole looks like WMP from - You can't simulate a dialer, but with trickle you can mimic a 56k/ISDN connection pretty well - SyncTERM for BBS's - ScummVM, with just a bilinear filter, because I played tons of adventures - There's an SDL2…

Trillian > Pidgin. What's Pan?

A news reader (NNTP). OFC, geek people would use SLRN, but we are mimicking Windows.

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

#116

Post by wavemode »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #96

Three modern desktop environments that I use: - Windows 10/11. Especially in 11, it's easiest just to type the start of an app's name into the search box. As opposed to the two clicks it takes to get to the "traditional" menu where you still have to scroll to find it. - Gnome (only on fresh Linux installs, usually replaced with Mate pretty soon). Has a smartphone-style app grid, but here, too, its quickest just to ty…

The decline in usability and organization of the Windows start menu over the years has been frankly staggering.

Whenever I see screenshots of the old menu I get pangs of nostalgia.

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

#117

Post by deadbabe »

This looks neat, but the problem with all these nostalgia fueled projects is that if you use it seriously you’re basically LARPing being in a kinder past. Eventually it just gives an empty feeling, and you long for days when interfaces didn’t just look like this for fun, it’s because that’s what they simply were, and this was the state of the art. But you can never go back to those days.

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

#118

Post by MarkusWandel »

teamonkey wrote: post #111
MarkusWandel wrote: post #96

Three modern desktop environments that I use: - Windows 10/11. Especially in 11, it's easiest just to type the start of an app's name into the search box. As opposed to the two clicks it takes to get to the "traditional" menu where you still have to scroll to find it. - Gnome (only on fresh Linux installs, usually replaced with Mate pretty soon). Has a smartphone-style app grid, but here, too, its quickest just to ty…

How do you get Windows to launch an installed app after you type the first few letters, instead of searching the web with Edge and Bing?

Type into the search box and when the app icon comes up, click on it.

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

#119

Post by MarkusWandel »

wavemode wrote: post #116
MarkusWandel wrote: post #96

Three modern desktop environments that I use: - Windows 10/11. Especially in 11, it's easiest just to type the start of an app's name into the search box. As opposed to the two clicks it takes to get to the "traditional" menu where you still have to scroll to find it. - Gnome (only on fresh Linux installs, usually replaced with Mate pretty soon). Has a smartphone-style app grid, but here, too, its quickest just to ty…

The decline in usability and organization of the Windows start menu over the years has been frankly staggering. Whenever I see screenshots of the old menu I get pangs of nostalgia.

At least you get the right-click menu that has a lot of handy stuff in the old format.
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