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A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

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Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#101

Post by kyleee »

least wrote: post #61
bluecatswim wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real hacker news-ish comments are the ones like yours posting cheap "gotchas" and pointing out hypocrisies where there are none every time someone says something similiar. An engineer sees structural problems with buildings and bridges where people who use them everyday don't. An english major can see a problem with the language used in a newspaper where thousands of other readers don't. There is nothing unusual…

Are programmers really UI/UX experts, though? If you said a programmer pointing out how stupid programming is shown in film you might have a point but I really don't think many of these people pointing out their perceived flaws in UI/UX are experts. In any thread that mentions UI/UX something like this always comes up where someone is bemoaning current UI/UX and hearkening to the good old days of when UI/UX was good,…

It's the current crop of supposed UI/UX experts though that have foisted this mess of material design, hidden menus, disappearing scroll bars, text fields that don't behave like text fields (ex. browser URL bar) etc. So yes, I do believe many programmers who have to suffer years and decades of UI/UX "advancement" (much of what is actually just design churn) and use computing environments extensively, can definitely have a lot of good input.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#103

Post by citrin_ru »

pkrumins wrote: post #70

Windows 2000 was the peak of practical and usable GUI design. It all went downhill from there.

It looks like Microsoft used to pay more attention to GUI design and usability back in Windows 2000 days, which is the peak GUI for me too. Windows 2000 design is very similar to Windows 95, but changes from 95 to 2000 I see as improvements.

Starting with XP more attention was paid to aesthetics and less to other qualities. E. g. XP controls consumed more screen space, which was a visible regression at times when 15-inch displays were still common.

Up until Windows 7 there was a classic desktop theme which was quite close to 2000 and I used it. Unfortunately Windows 10 has no such option. I use mostly FreeBSD and MacOS nowadays, but still have an old notebook with Windows 7 which I occasionally use. If I disliked Windows 10 less I would have upgraded it to Windows 10.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#104

Post by yuuta »

Const-me wrote: post #85
yuuta wrote: post #20

I really enjoy the Aero glass effect from Windows 7 and feel unfortunate when Microsoft removed it in Windows 8. I tried to disassemble DWM to find out its implementation but it did not work, since I have no experience in reverse engineering and Win32 developing. This project seems to recreate a pretty good Aero effect and I'm happy with it, even though there are flaws. Hopefully someone could analysis how Microsoft…

These shaders are *.bin resources embedded in dwmcore.dll. This tool can extract https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/resources_extract.html Then, cmd_decompiler.exe from there https://github.com/bo3b/3Dmigoto can either disassemble or decompile these binaries. The pixel shaders there include both ps_4_0 code for new GPUs, and ps_2_0 for running on DirectX 9 GPUs. This makes the disassembler slightly more useful than the de…

That's pretty helpful. Thank you very much.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#105

Post by drdebug »

losingom wrote: post #89

>It is built on top of XP.css, which is an extension of 98.CSS. Just like Windows itself. Even Windows 11, despite the new coat of paint, still has code from -at least- the Windows 3.1 days.

I wonder if that's really the case: is there really any windows 3.1 16-bit code running in Windows 11 ?

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#106

Post by least »

kyleee wrote: post #101
least wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are programmers really UI/UX experts, though? If you said a programmer pointing out how stupid programming is shown in film you might have a point but I really don't think many of these people pointing out their perceived flaws in UI/UX are experts. In any thread that mentions UI/UX something like this always comes up where someone is bemoaning current UI/UX and hearkening to the good old days of when UI/UX was good,…

It's the current crop of supposed UI/UX experts though that have foisted this mess of material design, hidden menus, disappearing scroll bars, text fields that don't behave like text fields (ex. browser URL bar) etc. So yes, I do believe many programmers who have to suffer years and decades of UI/UX "advancement" (much of what is actually just design churn) and use computing environments extensively, can definitely h…

They are called "user" interface and "user" experience, after all. Any "user" can call it bad and it can be a valid point. It can also definitely be valuable input. But an engineer identifying a design flaw in a bridge or an English major identifying errors in language use are people that have specifically studied those things and have a depth and breadth of knowledge that most "users" don't. Programmers aren't UI/UX experts just because they use applications.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#107

Post by yuuta »

causality0 wrote: post #2

I'm beginning to have the feeling Windows 7 is the last Microsoft OS I'll ever feel good about installing.

Same here. For me, Windows 7 is consistent in design, efficient (in both performance and user experience) and pure.

* Inconsistent design: Starting from Windows 8, Microsoft switched to the Metro design. In Windows 10 Microsoft changed to Fluent design. However, even the Windows components themselves are not fully switched. In Windows 10 today you can find so many legacy designs that had not been removed. Windows 7, however, is pretty consistent from shell to explorer and control panels.

* Inefficient in user experience: Starting from Windows 8, MS started focusing on these so called touch devices, with the trade off of having larger margins, bigger buttons and slower animations, making user feel inefficient getting things done.

* Inefficient in performance: Windows 10 is slow as well, in a 2c 8g VBox VM, Windows 10 boot time is longer than Windows 7 and I have to wait for several seconds to open a UWP program, which is unbearable. Personally that is somehow related to the so called "modern" developing. For that I mean all the UWP / Web stuff. For instance, The Windows 10 start menu uses EdgeHTML inside (just press F7 and Caret Browsing dialog will show up).

* Anti-features: With the Microsoft's focus on "cloud" experience, Windows 10 added so many anti-features that I hate. Even though some are optional, I do not want an OS to contain any "cloud" based features and advertisements. Examples: Microsoft account, Telemetry, Consumer Experience (I mean all the pre-installed bullshit). I run several domains in my home and the first group policy I would apply to client computers is to turn off Telemetry (level 0 security), disable web search, disable spotlight and turn off the consumer experience.

I am not saying that Windows 10 is bad. It is, from a technical point of view, more advanced. However, because of all these bad designs I still think Windows 7 is the last Windows version I would feel satisfied.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#108

Post by makapuf »

drdebug wrote: post #105
losingom wrote: post #89

>It is built on top of XP.css, which is an extension of 98.CSS. Just like Windows itself. Even Windows 11, despite the new coat of paint, still has code from -at least- the Windows 3.1 days.

I wonder if that's really the case: is there really any windows 3.1 16-bit code running in Windows 11 ?

In a way, yes... see this article : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27556754

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#109

Post by mmis1000 »

foxpurple wrote: post #32
superasn wrote: post #28

What I love about these old designs is how obvious everything is. You just can't miss the button or the tabs. Now after all this skeuomorphic design revolution it's so hard to tell, is it a button, text, link etc. It probably looks better but it is at the cost of extra thinking for the user.

This is such a hacker news comment. Somehow a group of people supposedly good at using computers struggle to work out what a button is while the average user seems to have no problems.

The average people will call one of their family/friend that knows about computers/phones most as a tech assistance. Because they obviously have no clue about how to use it them self. And it's lucky that it is not you in this case.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#110

Post by 0x0 »

drdebug wrote: post #105
losingom wrote: post #89

>It is built on top of XP.css, which is an extension of 98.CSS. Just like Windows itself. Even Windows 11, despite the new coat of paint, still has code from -at least- the Windows 3.1 days.

I wonder if that's really the case: is there really any windows 3.1 16-bit code running in Windows 11 ?

I believe Windows 11 will be 64bit only, so I guess that means no more NTVDM and no more win16 support. In that case, there won't be any windows 3.1 16-bit code left over. On the other hand, win32 was designed to be mostly source-code-compatible with win16, and I'm sure you'll find elements that have been given a minimal win32 porting effort, while a "git blame" equivalent would probably trace back to windows 3.1 still.

On the other hand, 32bit Windows 10 is still going strong and there are probably plenty of windows 3.1 (and windows 3.0) applications that would still run there.

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