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What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

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Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#31

Post by al_borland »

petilon wrote: post #9
marginalia_nu wrote: post #3

Design language, like any language is metaphorical. The thing that makes these skeumorphic designs work so well is that it kinda forces a consistent metaphor, and consistency above all else is huge for UX. The fact that it's based on things we've seen in real life is also helps, as it means we can reason about the UI with the same faculties we've spent our entire life training.

Why are designers not understanding this these days? I think one reason is that flat UI is super easy. Skeuomorphic is extremely hard to get right, and if you don't get it right it looks super tacky. Most people who have the word "designer" in their job title don't have the artistic skills needed to pull it off. This is why most designers are opposed to skeuomorphic. Somewhere in between is the right approach. The Ne…

Flat UI is also really difficult, as it can easily look cheap, boring, and unfinished.

Even Apple’s initial move to a flat UI in iOS 7 suffered from this. It took a long time to get refined to the point of not feeling like a major step backward. I still preferred the look of iOS 6 to anything that came afterwards. The skeuomorphic designs were warm, inviting, and fun. They served as a nice juxtaposition to the rather austere hardware.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#32

Post by rib3ye »

bluedino wrote: post #4

Was this peak Windows UI? I would say so, but the Active Dekstop stuff wasn't the right move. Fisher-price came next, with Windows XP. At least you could easily switch back to classic. And then Windows 8, we won't even talk about that.

Maybe more importantly, Win2k was the first windows version actually WORKED in a predictable way after years of unstable post-Win3.1 (Win95 and onward) production releases.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#33

Post by ranger_danger »

al_borland wrote: post #14

> Since that button down there is called "Start", it implies that you can probably do something with it, maybe start programs? Click and you'll see the Start Menu: Over time it seems like a lot of designs stop feeling the need to lead the user in this way. There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does, and we are no longer in the phase of trying to teach the population…

> There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does, and we are no longer in the phase of trying to teach the population to use a computer for the first time

Strong disagree, because:

> Every day there are new young people using a computer for the first time

I can assure you these people have no idea what the start button is or does... it doesn't help that it no longer even says "Start" for the last ~20 years.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#34

Post by Telaneo »

usrnm wrote: post #16
alberth wrote: post #6

It was clear, clean and understandable. Buttons looked like buttons. Windows (which have frames), looked like windows. And there was no distracting design elements.

I remember those times and there were a lot if windows that did not look like windows and buttons that did not look like buttons. Not in the apps provided by the OS itself, but in third-party software. It was the time of wild experiments, especially in software created by enthusiasts. We just tend to forget this stuff

It's not like the world was perfect before; it's just that it's gotten even worse. The lack of consistency has spread, to the point there barely is any.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#35

Post by petilon »

vslira wrote: post #20
petilon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are designers not understanding this these days? I think one reason is that flat UI is super easy. Skeuomorphic is extremely hard to get right, and if you don't get it right it looks super tacky. Most people who have the word "designer" in their job title don't have the artistic skills needed to pull it off. This is why most designers are opposed to skeuomorphic. Somewhere in between is the right approach. The Ne…

What’s the meaning of skeuomorphic design for a generation that has never worked with the original physical artifacts they’re based on, though?

It doesn't really matter if they haven't used the original physical artifacts. If it looks physical you can figure out how to use it based on your knowledge of other physical objects you have used in your life.

Of course if you display for example, a spin dial like old telephones that has a particularly quirky way to use, them this doesn't apply.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#36

Post by ranger_danger »

reaperducer wrote: post #25
bromuro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the floppy disk for “save”? Or the old school phone receiver for “call”?

There's nothing wrong with either of those. No different than "windows" or "desktops" or "files." When was the last time you actually saw a file folder? Or a document separated by sheets with "tabs." 95% of computer users have never seen an ethernet cable, but they're still the symbol for networking. 99% of car drivers have never seen brake calipers, but they're part of the icon when my car's parking brake is on.

> When was the last time you actually saw a file folder? Or a document separated by sheets with "tabs."

Every day because normal functioning adults still need to keep paper records of things.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#37

Post by marcosdumay »

xg15 wrote: post #21

> Me: "I don't like smartphone UIs. Everything is flat, nothing indicates where you can touch or not. I have to randomly try everything on the screen." Response by non-tech person: "Well, yeah, of course you have to try everything? How else would this work?" I think this goes deeper than many tech people realize. From what I understood from talking with "nontechnical"(*) friends, relatives, etc, for a good potion of…

My parents never had any problem understanding where they can click on Windows 3.11. They never could understand how to interact with DOS GUIs.

Nowadays they have decades of experience with computers. They still can't predict what part of a web-site they can interact with, but they have memorized all the actions they can make on the phone apps they use.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#38

Post by xg15 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #3

Design language, like any language is metaphorical. The thing that makes these skeumorphic designs work so well is that it kinda forces a consistent metaphor, and consistency above all else is huge for UX. The fact that it's based on things we've seen in real life is also helps, as it means we can reason about the UI with the same faculties we've spent our entire life training.

You still need some design experience and "taste" though.

I've seen some B2B apps which used the Windows look-and-feel and looked absolutely awful: Actions wildly scattered through buttons, menus and context menus, panels and tabs nested several layers deep until the UI started to look like a canyon formation - and no icons or color at all, because I suppose those would have been "unprofessional" - so everything was in dull gray.

(I think it's worth realizing how colorful the stock Windows dialogs and applications actually are through the use of icons, even despite all widgets being gray.)

I still believe the Windows 2000-era UI toolkit is one of the best, because at least it gives you straightforward pathways to build a good-looking and usable UI - but you still have to want to do it.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#39

Post by clark_dent »

the_other wrote: post #19

I agree that we had much better patterns back then. The software industry in general worked towards sharing visual paradigms, making use of system designs of their host playforms, facilitated discovery etc etc. All that was good and the recent trends moving us away from that consistency and discoverability are a detrement being steamrolled over by agents… But I don’t agree that it “looked nice”. I hated Windows 95 an…

Computer UIs needed borders and outlines because there are no brain-intuitive visual cues: no depth parallax, no shading, nothing shifts as you move your head, and until relatively recently they had poor contrast and brightness variability compared to the real world.

It was also a compromise for interface device limitations. We didn't have 4000 DPI mice with scroll wheels and 26 configurable buttons; you were lucky to have a 1024x768 resolution; and 16 bit color was for people shelling out $$$. Obvious borders and some padding between elements were a necessity to click what you intended to click.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#40

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

Zak wrote: post #26

I agree with the author's wish for visual cues when something is clickable, scrollable, etc.... This, on the other hand: > Imitating real objects is good, too -- I don't have a single one of Android's "sliders" anywhere in my house, for example, so why don't you make this a checkbox, because writing down a check mark on paper is something that I actually do: feels like an idea from a time when many people were encoun…

There is a specific UI guideline for something that can be enabled or not: it's called a tick box. The on-off switch thing is a distinctly iOS invention [1]. The funny thing is that OS X (now macOS) mostly held off using those 'switches' too, until fairly recently.

[1]: https://freeimage.host/i/CxYBW6G

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