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Windows XP Professional

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Re: Windows XP Professional

#161

Post by Hobadee »

CrimsonCape wrote: post #108
wibbily wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man nothing drives me further up the wall than when a nice progress indicator with discrete segments gets animated with a lazy `to { rotate(360deg); }` etc[1]. It is my molehill to die on [1] https://cdn.dribbble.com/userupload/41647820/file/original-8...

You know talking about progress bars, it takes a lot of confidence to program a linear progress bar. You think you know when loading will be complete and think you know can break down the incremental progress made during loading. Instead we get these spinning wheels that are like "maybe in the future this wheel will stop and we will have a return value." No confidence whatsoever. I know this is true because Apple tri…

Progress bars are very hard. I implemented a PowerShell progress bar in a script I wrote, and even that was hard. The script did a nested iteration, deleting objects and re-starting the iteration. I updated the progress bar based on completion of the outermost iteration, but because of how things processed, the progress bar would move more or less logarithmicly; super fast at the start, but slowing down significantly at the end.

I'm sure I could have made the progress bar move more smoothly, but it would have required restructuring my entire program. (It probably needed it, but for a simple script I ran occasionally, not worth it.)

Re: Windows XP Professional

#162

Post by Hobadee »

alnwlsn wrote: post #85
mmastrac wrote: post #17

How can you tell that any Windows or Mac clone UI is a re-implementation? Easy: try to move your mouse diagonally into the Send To menu after letting it pop up. If the send-to menu closes as you mouse over the item into the submenu, it's a clone. If the menu stays up even if you brush over another menu item, it's either real or a Good Clone. :) For the fun history, @DonHopkins had a thread a few years back: https://n…

There's something like this in every desktop Linux I've tried, which made it feel like using the mouse was in some way weird and broken. But I've been using it for long enough now that it either got fixed, or more likely, I got used to it. I don't even remember what it was, something about clicking drop down menus a certain way? Reminds me of the first time I ever used classic Macintosh System OS, and how you have to…

...the number of times I accidentally selected the wrong menu item because my finger slipped off the mouse button... I'm getting bad flashbacks!

Re: Windows XP Professional

#163

Post by ColonelPhantom »

int_19h wrote: post #145
sangeeth96 wrote: post #26

Real thing is possible on https://copy.sh/v86/ I think but need an XP disk image[1], not readily available at the moment (probably for copyright reasons?). [1]: https://github.com/copy/v86/issues/86

Better yet ditch the browser and get a proper emulator, preferably one that emulates all the period-accurate hardware such as https://86box.net .

Is 86box period-accurate for Windows XP? It seems to go up to Socket 370 (Pentium III) which is very early for XP. Additionally, from my experience using PCem (which 86box is based on), you need pretty beefy hardware to emulate a Pentium II or K6, let alone to go beyond them. And those are period-accurate for Windows 98, not XP.

Re: Windows XP Professional

#164

Post by winocm »

saltcured wrote: post #152
AlecSchueler wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just moving, it gives no actual indication of progress.

Back in the dark ages, "idiot dots" or "idiot marks" was a phrase I heard for the various text terminal equivalents. It would cycle through a small number of text values with some kind of backspace/overwrite to keep things localized to where the cursor ought to be. One version was a variable length ellipses: . .. ... that would grow and reset in place. Another was an expanding "dot": . o O that would cycle in place a…

The latter is known as a "twiddle" in BSD land.

(c.f: https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release-10/src/sys/...)

Re: Windows XP Professional

#165

Post by poglet »

ch_123 wrote: post #45

I feel slightly ashamed that I spent enough time using Windows XP that was able to spot that this was a clone based on the fonts and shadow effects alone. Nice effort though.

Also the Windows boot loading bar was way too smooth.

Re: Windows XP Professional

#166

Post by karmakaze »

nickt wrote: post #138
maplant wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could tell instantly in the loading screen because the three blocks in the progress bar move smoothly across it.

Old, but good mandatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/612/

I've had times where I aborted an operation that was obviously not working. Eventually out of ideas, I waited out the 1,163 seconds and it completed normally.

Re: Windows XP Professional

#167

Post by nine_k »

dijit wrote: post #52
devnull3 wrote: post #40

Win XP remains my favourite OS till date. I was in college and getting hands on a pirated copy back then makes me so nostalgic. There was a cambrian explosion of tools to customize the look and feel. TweakXP pro is the one I remember. All pirated off-course.

I remember being extremely envious of the "Alienware theme" that you could only get with an actual Alienware machine. That was surprisingly short-lived though, such custom experiences are uncommon these days. Seems like nobody is theming Windows- they just fill it with crapware.

Why theme it? For many people, it has three main functions: starting a game, starting Chrome, and starting MSO. All three kinds have their own custom look, or theme support. The native UI is barely visible, unless you're a heavy Explorer user.

Re: Windows XP Professional

#168

Post by 5pl1n73r »

devnull3 wrote: post #40

Win XP remains my favourite OS till date. I was in college and getting hands on a pirated copy back then makes me so nostalgic. There was a cambrian explosion of tools to customize the look and feel. TweakXP pro is the one I remember. All pirated off-course.

Did you have the devils0wn copy though?

Re: Windows XP Professional

#169

Post by whartung »

apatheticonion wrote: post #153

God I miss Windows XP. I feel like, with a few small changes, the Windows XP GUI would be the most solid desktop experience you could possibly have. Throw in POSIX compliance/bash, first party Linux compatibility (not WSL), window snapping, dark mode, maybe a spotlight-like search and a few enhancements to the file manager and you'd have a pretty much perfect desktop/productivity OS. Why can't we have nice things?

  > maybe a spotlight-like search
As I recall, XP had a background indexing process, to facilitate system wide search.

I distinctly recall having to turn it off as I had builds fail more than once because the indexer had a derivative file open that the build was trying to delete.

Locking open files has been a Windows pet peeve of mine for decades.

Re: Windows XP Professional

#170

Post by bravesoul2 »

sunaookami wrote: post #87
1970-01-01 wrote: post #51

Back when the Start Menu made sense. It wasn't rose colored glasses, it was functional.

The Windows XP start menu sucked, no search function and it was common to have 3 columns full of shortcuts with folders inside folders. It only got better with Windows Vista.

Win 11 has no (decent) search function
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