Designing Windows 95’S User Interface • Hacker News Board

Re: Designing Windows 95’S User Interface

#11

Post by chunkyks » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

I do enjoy these sorts of things. There was a time when it was about "user interface design" instead of "user experience". Back then it was about "human interface guidelines", consistency, efficiency, and minimal use friction.

Nowadays it's all about the prettiest farkle and the most novel interface. Where friction actually means "more time eyeballs spend looking at my design", and consistency has zero value.

Teams, I'm looking at you. Every election app? You suck at usability, and my laptop is too hot. Windows metro? You obviously sucked and no one misses you. Ribbon instead of menus? Thanks for making me move my mouse and eyes ten times as far just so I can enjoy your pretty icons.

Re: Designing Windows 95’S User Interface

#12

Post by 1MachineElf » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #10

1MachineElf wrote: post #9

Today Microsoft has the resources and capital to release Windows 95 "remastered edition" - one has to wonder why they haven't.

I've kinda been doing that for over a year: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 Add Wine, and you'd have a lot of compatibility with the original!

It's beautiful! Thank you!

Re: Designing Windows 95’S User Interface

#13

Post by jauco » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #5

user3939382 wrote: post #2

Like big revolutions in fine art or music, the UI patterns seem obvious and common to contemporary users, but you have to judge them by the genius it took for MS to arrive there on their own for the first time. I would argue that a step up the size of what we saw from Windows 3.1 to 95 hasn’t been seen since, certainly not on the desktop.

MS did not arrive there on their own. They had a lawsuit with apple and if you look at graphics toolkits around that time most of them had those features.

Both apple and ms stole most of it from xerox parc (star desktop)