Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

socket3.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 402 posts

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#101

Post by Angostura »

hunvreus wrote: post #86
vadimberman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still get frustrated on OSX when I minimize a window and have to hunt around for it Windows user here. Honest curiosity: does anyone know why the minimize / maximize works on the Mac the way it does? I mean, what's the rationale to design it like this?

It drove me nuts when they updated the maximize button behavior to full screen. I use ShiftIt, a neat little Open Source tool that help me manage windows sizes and positions (including minimizing and maximizing): https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt I've recommend it to pretty much any Mac user I've met.

Alternatively, use opt-click to just invoke the old-style maximise. No add-on needed.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#102

Post by Angostura »

russellbeattie wrote: post #45
vadimberman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still get frustrated on OSX when I minimize a window and have to hunt around for it Windows user here. Honest curiosity: does anyone know why the minimize / maximize works on the Mac the way it does? I mean, what's the rationale to design it like this?

No idea... And a few versions ago Apple changed the maximize button to go full screen, which made it useless for the 95% of us who don't use one app at a time. Minimized windows also used to show up at the bottom of the screen when using "Expose", but then Apple changed the name to "Mission Control" and removed them. Just one more example of them slowly but surely driving its Mac customers away.

use alt-click on the green button.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#103

Post by cesarb »

krylon wrote: post #44
ogdoad wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we actually reached the point where we idolize something that was equally mainstream to bash when it came out? Remember "Winblows" &c? Suddenly, faced with hyper-spy mega-corps, the dumb simplicity of the evil-yet-cute Windows 95 is desirable. Like the lesser of two evils, or the evil you know. Any day now, a post will come up extolling the illumined joys of mainframe COBOL programming.

> Remember "Winblows" &c? There were many, many things wrong with Windows 95 (and its successors). But the design of the Shell was solid. (Also, considering how hardware requirements have skyrocketed, it might seem remarkable to some that it could run on a computer with 8 MiB of RAM and a CPU that makes today's low-end mobile phones look like supercomputers and still feel snappy.) I know people used to joke about usi…

> I know people used to joke about using the "Start" button to shutdown the computer, but I never understood what is so funny about that.

If you think of shutdown as a "stop" command to the computer, you see the contradiction: to stop your computer, press start.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#104

Post by petercooper »

russellbeattie wrote: post #26

It's hard to remember, but even though Windows 3.11 was extremely dominant at the time, it was by no means assured that Windows 95 would be the success that it was. The very first version missed wildly in some big ways (MSN was a folder integrated into the desktop, for example, and no TCP/IP support [*Edit: yes there was - I misremembered.]), but the core, underlying redesign of the GUI was so profoundly good it prop…

it was by no means assured that Windows 95 would be the success that it was

I remember these times well. It was considered a huge break. People were whining about how stupid the Start menu was compared to just seeing your apps in front of you all the time :-D I love that we eventually came full circle to a Windows 3.1 Program Manager-esque approach with iOS nowadays!

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#105

Post by jentulman »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #68
frou_dh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS has Hide & HideOthers in addition to Minimize. I go weeks at a time without using minimize because of those. IMO there's a whole generation of people who did their early computing on MS Windows (including myself) and so internalised that that is how GUIs are "supposed to work". When moving to something else later in life there's a feeling that it is "wrong", but it (e.g macOS)'s way of doing things is also corr…

And this hidden setting makes working with Hide/Hide Others much more intuitive: http://osxdaily.com/2010/06/22/make-hidden-application-icons...

Thanks for that one.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#106

Post by ndespres »

microtonal wrote: post #62
leadingthenet wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which made it useless for the 95% of us who don't use one app at a time I'm actually willing to bet good money that it's the other way around and it's you who is in the minority.

It depends on the definition of 'at the same time', but I think that many people in a work environment at the very least use an e-mail client and a productivity application at the same time. Also throw in a calendar for good measure. I think that Apple thought that many regular users would switch to full screen apps on the Mac, combined with Launchpad (it's just like an iPad/iPhone). But virtually all non-tech-savvy…

Only after reading your comment did it occur to me that I should set up applications in the Launchpad the same way I have them organized on my iPhone (or like Win 3.1's "Program Groups" or Start Menu folders) and stop using the Dock to hold the applications I use most often. Maybe that would help keep track of which applications I have open, and where my minimized apps keep going off to!

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#107

Post by anthk »

ogdoad wrote: post #8
amiga-workbench wrote: post #2

When actual thought and reasoning went into UI design. Nice to see the methodology.

Have we actually reached the point where we idolize something that was equally mainstream to bash when it came out? Remember "Winblows" &c? Suddenly, faced with hyper-spy mega-corps, the dumb simplicity of the evil-yet-cute Windows 95 is desirable. Like the lesser of two evils, or the evil you know. Any day now, a post will come up extolling the illumined joys of mainframe COBOL programming.

Linux/Unix user since the 2003.

1) Windows 95 is a good UI design, better than even CDE. Heck, Win3.1 and CDE shared a lot of stuff.

2) ICEWM was golden back in 2001. Guess what mimicked.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#108

Post by jvzr »

garblegarble wrote: post #32
russellbeattie wrote: post #26

It's hard to remember, but even though Windows 3.11 was extremely dominant at the time, it was by no means assured that Windows 95 would be the success that it was. The very first version missed wildly in some big ways (MSN was a folder integrated into the desktop, for example, and no TCP/IP support [*Edit: yes there was - I misremembered.]), but the core, underlying redesign of the GUI was so profoundly good it prop…

>Even though I've used a Mac daily for the past decade or so, I still miss the task bar, and window-oriented GUI of Windows. I still get frustrated on OSX when I minimize a window and have to hunt around for it. I wouldn't switch back because of the underlying crap that is the Windows OS and file system, but I still miss the interface. OT but have you tried Witch[1] as a task switcher? It switches between windows, wh…

I find Contexts (https://contexts.co/) a better application to do exactly that

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface

#109

Post by ryanianian »

sodapopcan wrote: post #90
russellbeattie wrote: post #26

It's hard to remember, but even though Windows 3.11 was extremely dominant at the time, it was by no means assured that Windows 95 would be the success that it was. The very first version missed wildly in some big ways (MSN was a folder integrated into the desktop, for example, and no TCP/IP support [*Edit: yes there was - I misremembered.]), but the core, underlying redesign of the GUI was so profoundly good it prop…

The one thing I don't understand that Mac has never adopted is being able to use open and save dialogues as mini file explorers (move stuff around and rename, specifically). Having to switch to Finder to move or rename a file that has the same name as the file I'm trying to save is ridiculous. Of course I never need to do this anymore since I only work on text files under revision control, but it still seems odd to m…

You can use most open/save dialogues to do this - a right-click is all it takes in most places. But I definitely agree with your sentiment. Finder feels like a badly-designed toy. The latest things they've added - tabs and labels iirc - require more steps to do the same tasks in the new way versus the old way.
Post reply on HN