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Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

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Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#101

Post by Dwedit »

mk_stjames wrote: post #31

Everyone seems to love the Windows 7 era but for me, Windows peaked GUI-wise with Windows 2000 and everything since then has felt like a poor 'skin' or misplaced 'theme' on top of something else. Windows XP's level of 'plug and play' for devices/drivers ushered in the modern OS feel from a usability standpoint, but from a 'get-shit-done' GUI and responsiveness standpoint Win 2000 (and up to Windows Server 2003 by ext…

I'm a big fan of the Windows XP Royale theme (from Media Center Edition). Like regular XP, but glossier and shinier.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#102

Post by pndy »

Gathering6678 wrote: post #90
jve wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... sometimes it doesn't find anything. Anyways, this has pitched me towards app "Everything" I occasionally check whether after all these years MS has fixed the search... no, no surprise there. I get that it depends on indexing service which may be buggy, etc... but I guess it is possible to prioritize/have alternate index for most important stuff like executables. This bugs me the most: there is a program, but…

Everything is an absolute gem. I literally cannot survive on the work computer without it. At home on Linux, this is one of things (probably the only one even) I really missed from Windows.

Have you seen FSearch? https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch It's quite similar to Everything.

Btw, there's also fooyin which you may say is "modeled" after foobar2000 https://github.com/fooyin/fooyin - another piece I miss from Windows.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#103

Post by embedding-shape »

rincebrain wrote: post #57
Timwi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Start Menu integrated search would have been real nice if it worked properly, but unfortunately they decided on some kind of “search” algorithm that can't even do a substring match on items in the Start Menu. I have no clue what the thinking there was, but it drives me to not want to use it.

I think what drives me mad is its nondeterminism. If I hit Winkey and type a string, it should not be the case that I get different results from doing that 6 times in a row because it depends whether some background task which changes the results finishes first.

Another thing these "search boxes" (happens on macOS/iOS also AFAIK) is that sometimes even exact matches don't match unless you're using some specific length.

So if I type "ABC" I see the right application. If I type "AB" I don't see it anymore. But if I do "A" then I see the right application. So you have to then always remember to do either "A" or "ABC", because doing "AB" shows a completely different result as the first hit.

Completely bonkers behavior, and shit like this convinced me that neither Microsoft nor Apple has actual UX professionals employed anymore, or they don't have sufficient power to actually influence how things are made.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#104

Post by bflesch »

rincebrain wrote: post #57
Timwi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Start Menu integrated search would have been real nice if it worked properly, but unfortunately they decided on some kind of “search” algorithm that can't even do a substring match on items in the Start Menu. I have no clue what the thinking there was, but it drives me to not want to use it.

I think what drives me mad is its nondeterminism. If I hit Winkey and type a string, it should not be the case that I get different results from doing that 6 times in a row because it depends whether some background task which changes the results finishes first.

Yes, there have been some obvious race conditions - especially with the web results or on gnome/linux with the listing of open browser tabs.

In a similar vein the browser search bar keeps remembering things you mistype once, and if your automatism is to type "n" and then press enter to go to "news.ycombinator.com" you will end up on the wrong page over and over again, because internally it keeps a counter and ranks higher depending on number of times you have "clicked" it.

Quite annoying UX with many search bar implementations and it makes me feel like the people who design these are not actual power users of their own software.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#105

Post by shin_lao »

mk_stjames wrote: post #31

Everyone seems to love the Windows 7 era but for me, Windows peaked GUI-wise with Windows 2000 and everything since then has felt like a poor 'skin' or misplaced 'theme' on top of something else. Windows XP's level of 'plug and play' for devices/drivers ushered in the modern OS feel from a usability standpoint, but from a 'get-shit-done' GUI and responsiveness standpoint Win 2000 (and up to Windows Server 2003 by ext…

Windows 2000 was such a major improvement over NT4 and of course 9x that yes, you're right, it was awesome, but it still had issues and in terms of device drivers future versions brought a lot of things that improved overall stability.

I think the best benefit of Windows 2000 was that the GUI was extremely coherent. Even in Windows 11 for some sub menu and options you sometimes have a Windows 2000 UI popping up out of nowhere.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#106

Post by bflesch »

dmos62 wrote: post #63
ch_123 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, search integrated into the start menu was a major quality of life improvement. Particularly the ability to hit the Windows key and type the name of an application. Strictly speaking, this was introduced in Vista, but I feel like Windows 7 added a lot of useful polish to the Windows Vista style of UI. I otherwise agree that the older Win 2k era UI was pretty much an ideal UI. The whole "frutiger aero" look did…

I use the Win-key+[start typing] search all the time, but I also used it in the XP era. Only then it was a third-party app, with order of magnitude more customization and control. I actually have a worse experience now, but it's just above my tolerance threshold so I don't do anything about it.

Wouldn't it be below your tolerance threshold then? ;)

I feel during XP times it was basic string matching, and sometimes I miss that. At one point on linux they also started matching on description text, but then application maintainers started to add keywords to their description text for their app to rank higher, which again made it worse to find whatever you are looking for.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#107

Post by cosmic_cheese »

mk_stjames wrote: post #31

Everyone seems to love the Windows 7 era but for me, Windows peaked GUI-wise with Windows 2000 and everything since then has felt like a poor 'skin' or misplaced 'theme' on top of something else. Windows XP's level of 'plug and play' for devices/drivers ushered in the modern OS feel from a usability standpoint, but from a 'get-shit-done' GUI and responsiveness standpoint Win 2000 (and up to Windows Server 2003 by ext…

As much as I appreciate the classic Win9X look, I also like some more modern features like full bit depth alpha blending and anti-aliasing.

I actually like the Win7 version of Aero, but the real unlock of these features is the third party themes it enables. There were some really nice 7 themes that hold up even now.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#108

Post by shin_lao »

irishcoffee wrote: post #45
drooopy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived through every evolution of Windows from 3.1 up to 11 and Millenium/2000 still remains my favourite and I will always consider it the most 'get-shit-done' UI that Microsoft has ever built. Up until W10 removed the feature, I used to turn off the Themes service so that I could get the classic UI back. And I also completely agree with your point that everything else since then has felt like a poorly placed th…

Wait a sec. Windows 2000 was probably their best operating system. Windows ME was absolutely their worst. They were so different I’m not sure the entire company wasn’t swapped into the set of Severance (tv show) or something of that ilk.

Windows 2000 is based on the NT kernel which is a complete different operation system. ME is Windows 3.x with a 32-bit hack on top of MS-DOS.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#109

Post by bflesch »

drooopy wrote: post #76
ch_123 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were developed by completely different teams. As an aside - as someone who used ME back in the day, I feel like I honestly had more problems with Vista. ME was a downgrade from 98SE for sure, but I don't remember it being the same level of performance and reliability degradation that I saw going from XP to Vista pre-SP2.

Vista was an absolute dumpster fire but in no way compares to the awfulness of ME.

People did all the XP customization with compositor 3d effects and matrix screensavers. Then they hyped up Longhorn with all the magazines and delivered the Vista dumpster fire.

IIRC ME would just randomly crash explorer.exe with task bar disappearing but you could recover some of it. On Vista it was just overall sluggish and laggy visual experience.

Re: Classic 7 is a Windows 10 LTSC mod to look 1:1 to Windows 7

#110

Post by throwway120385 »

notabotiswear wrote: post #67
dosisking wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Please do not power off your machine. Installing update 1 of 100." I definitely prefer XP over 7. No automatic updates."

Automatic updates are not bad. Quite the opposite, it’s the lack of automatic patching that is dangerous. Win10/11’s problem isn’t auto updates, it’s the severely reduced user agency in the matter (and the quality of said updates, but that’s another story).

Auto updates are bad for a user's sense of control over their machine. Auto updates are generally good for security.
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