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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

#171

Post by ChoGGi »

cesarb wrote: post #84
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 Except that... it's no longer in the bottom left corner! Recently, I had to help a relative with a Windows system, and what passes for the "Start" button has now moved to somewhere more in the center (and, of course, this completely confused my relative, who was used to the old place). I also had to rant about Fitt's law…

Search indexing service maybe?

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#172

Post by Terr_ »

projektfu wrote: post #157
Terr_ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in regular fear that my fingertip will hit the wrong up/down icon.

I do it all the time and sometimes I notice and unflag an article. But often not.

I find accidental flags rarer due to the layout versus things I'm trying to tap, however the few times it's happened I only discovered it days or months later when visiting the "flagged" page [0].

Still, there's a kind of guilt, like realizing you unknowingly kicked a puppy who isn't there anymore.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/flagged

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#173

Post by ChoGGi »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #110
rib3ye wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but I would still usually see Explorer crash within an hour of a fresh Win2k installation. Windows 2000 was peak UI, but it wasn't peak Windows. That was Windows 7. And Windows 7 was advanced enough that you could still go back to the Windows 2000 UI.

Windows XP sp3 with Fisher Price turned off, till 7 came out of course.

(The first sp release where the system wasn't infected within 10m or so of being connected to the net)

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#175

Post by jmmv »

> It's a little bit sluggish, isn't it? And takes quite a bit of time to boot, right? It's certainly usable, though, not worse than your average website these days. I intend to use this setup for next Advent of Code. > > But here's the kicker: This is Windows 2000 SP4 running on a Pentium 133 with 64 MB of RAM and a spinning harddisk

Heh, gotta reference https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972004) from a few years ago. There is a video in there of Windows 2000 running on a K7-600 from 1999 and it indeed flies.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#176

Post by kristianp »

Narishma wrote: post #158
nycticorax wrote: post #49

Andreas Kling has said that one of his inspirations for SerenityOS was the Windows 2000 UI ( https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/ ). I found his general goal for SerenityOS ("Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix.") to be strangely validating ('Wait... So it's not just me?!'). And so of…

Even KDE has started to fall into the modern UI trappings. For example the taskbar somewhat recently became rounded and detached from the screen edges making it more annoying to reach the start button or the clock widget. But at least you can still configure it to how it used to be.

My only pain with KDE is trying to resize windows. I have a 1 pixel line a certain distance away from the outside of the window. I'm using an oldish version from kubuntu 22.04 though.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#177

Post by doubled112 »

kristianp wrote: post #176
Narishma wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even KDE has started to fall into the modern UI trappings. For example the taskbar somewhat recently became rounded and detached from the screen edges making it more annoying to reach the start button or the clock widget. But at least you can still configure it to how it used to be.

My only pain with KDE is trying to resize windows. I have a 1 pixel line a certain distance away from the outside of the window. I'm using an oldish version from kubuntu 22.04 though.

You can configure the window border size.

https://docs.kde.org/stable_kf6/en/kwin/kcontrol/kwindecorat...

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#178

Post by LocalH »

petilon wrote: post #148
kbelder wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amiga workbench was similar, although cruder, starting in 1985. I think it was just happening all around at that time.

Amiga workbench may have been available in 1985, but I think the bevels were introduced around 1990, in which case they copied NeXTSTEP.

Bevels were introduced in user software well before 2.0 changed the design system-wide. I remember seeing plenty of software that ran on 1.3 that had 3D gadgets, and there was an unofficial on-the-fly system patch that could provide 3D window gadgets. I don't remember specific years, however.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#179

Post by chrismorgan »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #104
falcor84 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember when I first encountered it (maybe before ios7), but their cardinal sin for me was my struggling for 10 minutes to make the calculator app go into scientific mode, seeing absolutely no setting for that, before eventually discovering from a friend that you have to physically rotate the phone to landscape orientation to get the additional buttons.

That reminds me of that notorious story of the adventure game from the 90s where you had to make a fake mustache out of cat hairs to solve a puzzle.

> you had to make a fake mustache out of cat hairs to solve a puzzle

It’s worse than that: the guy you have to do this to impersonate doesn’t have a moustache, so you then also have to draw one on his ID card with a marker.

Re: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000

#180

Post by chrismorgan »

desdenova wrote: post #108
cesarb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is an assumption that by now everyone knows what the menu in the bottom left corner does Except that... it's no longer in the bottom left corner! Recently, I had to help a relative with a Windows system, and what passes for the "Start" button has now moved to somewhere more in the center (and, of course, this completely confused my relative, who was used to the old place). I also had to rant about Fitt's law…

You could've changed the setting that puts the button back on the lower left corner and saved your relative the trouble. The new default is truly terrible, though, and this was the first setting I had to change when I was forced to use a windows laptop by the company I work in.

Last time I used Windows 11, maybe late last year, there was no way of doing that… though they had finally allowed you to turn off the source of ads (“widgets”) which they put in the corner instead.
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