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Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

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Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#51

Post by bee_rider »

narag wrote: post #35
reddalo wrote: post #3

I think Windows 9x was peak Windows. Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen. But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive . The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron. Edit. See OP's previous article here,…

I think Windows 9x was peak Windows. I'd choose XP instead. People disputing the performance maybe should consider the hardware at that time. Real problem with 9x was low-level stability. Juggling with compatibility was difficult, file access comes to mind, it was a kludge. It was possible but hard to maintain the system in a sensible state. XP was the first to bring NT architecture to desktop. It was a huge success.…

XP was quite ugly though. 98 or whatever was the best looking, but 7 was probably best overall (because they’d at least somewhat improved the UI and the system was generally more stable and modern).

(FWIW I mostly switched to Linux after XP so this isn’t nostalgia).

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#52

Post by redsocksfan45 »

jameshart wrote: post #21
reddalo wrote: post #3

I think Windows 9x was peak Windows. Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen. But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive . The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron. Edit. See OP's previous article here,…

Windows 9x did not feel ‘performant’. This is a false memory people seem to have. Spinning rust hard drives were slow. It took ages to launch a program - loading screens typically had time to display a progress bar and a series of notes about what they were up to - ‘loading extensions’, ‘reticulating splines’, etc. Word would stall whenever it was autosaving. Carrying out an operation like spell checking or doing a f…

[dead]

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#53

Post by inigyou »

jameshart wrote: post #21
reddalo wrote: post #3

I think Windows 9x was peak Windows. Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen. But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive . The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron. Edit. See OP's previous article here,…

Windows 9x did not feel ‘performant’. This is a false memory people seem to have. Spinning rust hard drives were slow. It took ages to launch a program - loading screens typically had time to display a progress bar and a series of notes about what they were up to - ‘loading extensions’, ‘reticulating splines’, etc. Word would stall whenever it was autosaving. Carrying out an operation like spell checking or doing a f…

Windows 9x achieved performance only a small factor slower than what we've got today on 1000x faster hardware.

VS6 was mentioned in a sibling comment - Casey Muratori's project loading and watch window stories come to mind. He had a video, which I can't find any more, showing him loading an identical project, compiling, starting the debugger, and watching a variable while single-stepping in VS6 on Windows 95 on Windows 95-era hardware, and the same on Windows 10 on Windows 10-era hardware. Guess which one was faster. It wasn't Windows 10.

Yes when we talk about the past there's an element of nostalgia-tinted glasses but there's also an element that stuff is just fucking worse now, and for no good reason. (I blame landlords - think about it. The whole economy is being pushed to do more with less because the value extraction related to land keeps increasing.)

Discord today does not load more quickly than MSN Messenger used to.

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#54

Post by inigyou »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #32
jameshart wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 9x did not feel ‘performant’. This is a false memory people seem to have. Spinning rust hard drives were slow. It took ages to launch a program - loading screens typically had time to display a progress bar and a series of notes about what they were up to - ‘loading extensions’, ‘reticulating splines’, etc. Word would stall whenever it was autosaving. Carrying out an operation like spell checking or doing a f…

Word 2.0 forever made me distrust Microsoft with an error: "File too large to save." It was on a 20Mb hard drive, and the file was small enough to fit on a 1.44Mb floppy. Turns out it was an obscure defect in Word: if you had quick save on, and the last page had a diagram or image, it would choke. Quick save or fast save - I forget what it was called. This would append deltas to your file, I think.

That is true, but the discussion here is about speed, not reliability.

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#55

Post by inigyou »

prmoustache wrote: post #43
reddalo wrote: post #3

I think Windows 9x was peak Windows. Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen. But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive . The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron. Edit. See OP's previous article here,…

I'd replace 9x by windows 2000. It was the only decent windows. 9x were BSOD crashfest, 2000 was stable as NT but without the enshittification of XP (ugly default themes, stuff above calling internet services with zero value). I think what you describe as responsive are 2 things: 1. absence of animations. I don't know about windows but on linux DE you can disable them, it feels snappier but more raw and I think most…

It's interesting how many people don't like the XP theme. I think it was cool, it was productive yet colorful, but I have to wonder if that's just because it arrived when I was at a certain life stage, the same way I had no problem with the COVID lockdown. We used XP in high school computer class the whole time I was there.

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#56

Post by inigyou »

pegasus wrote: post #18
reddalo wrote: post #3

I think Windows 9x was peak Windows. Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen. But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive . The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron. Edit. See OP's previous article here,…

> Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen. I would say information density was too high. All those always-on indicators: 3D scrollbars, buttons, etc. create a very busy picture. Today's interfaces are much cleaner which comes at a price of less information and hence, more ambiguity, but I for would rather pay that price…

I think this is a consequence of cultural changes in the last decades. It used to be normal to be able to open a settings window, or any other window, and read it, top to bottom or in any other order, and then you'd know what was there and where it was and which parts you don't care about.

I think it's much better than hidden features practically. But now we've developed this cultural aversion to complex-looking things. Probably started when the iPhone came out with just a flat screen and a button.

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#57

Post by inigyou »

Kwpolska wrote: post #41
janci wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why file open/save dialog is a separate thing. I want to use my file manager to open and save files!

You need a separate UI to handle things like entering the file name and filtering for appropriate files. Windows was designed so that the same file browser component is used in the Explorer and in open/save dialogs (but with Windows 7-era UI), but on Linux, which file manager should GTK use? GTK sometimes likes to pretend it’s separate from GNOME.

GTK being GIMP ToolKit and not GNOME ToolKit, I hear they frequently annoy the GNOME team by not deleting features that GNOME wants to delete.

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#58

Post by discostrings »

brewmarche wrote: post #45

I wonder why in Windows 10 and 11 there is no obvious way to cancel this dialog. You can press Esc, but there are no buttons to do it.

It also closes when you click/tap outside the dialog, unlike most other Windows dialogs. I actually can't think of another Windows dialog with the same level of functionality that behaves this way.

I'm pretty sure it was introduced in Windows 8 along with swipe gestures from the sides of the screen (like the "charms bar") with the tablet use case in mind and with little consideration given to the mouse experience.

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#59

Post by vitally3643 »

jameshart wrote: post #21
reddalo wrote: post #3

I think Windows 9x was peak Windows. Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen. But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive . The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron. Edit. See OP's previous article here,…

Windows 9x did not feel ‘performant’. This is a false memory people seem to have. Spinning rust hard drives were slow. It took ages to launch a program - loading screens typically had time to display a progress bar and a series of notes about what they were up to - ‘loading extensions’, ‘reticulating splines’, etc. Word would stall whenever it was autosaving. Carrying out an operation like spell checking or doing a f…

Windows itself was snappy and when it was slow it was because the machine itself was slow. This was communicated to the user by the machine making a hell of a racket doing machine things.

Windows was fast because the machine was slow. Now we're in a situation where Windows is slow in spite of running on a machine that outclasses every computer in the world combined 30 years ago.

Re: Windows UI evolution: Clicking an unassociated file

#60

Post by BirAdam »

bee_rider wrote: post #47
exitb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a running Windows 98 PC with P3 550MHz and SSD connected via IDE adapter. The drive is a bit out of place, but it’s legitimately the fastest booting, most responsive computer in my house. Its only speed issue is that it can really do just one thing. Any heavy task (including large file/network operations, apparently) will render the system almost unresponsive until it’s finished.

I wonder how the CPU in the SSD controller compares to the one in the PC.

That depends upon the type of SSD. There’s compact flash which is natively IDE, and the controllers are extremely weak, then there are modern TLC SATA drives where the controller would probably be a bit more powerful than the machine’s CPU.
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