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Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

explorer.samismith.com

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Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

#101

Post by funimpoded »

pocksuppet wrote: post #81
cube00 wrote: post #37

This is really impressive. It's exactly what I imagined the original Microsoft Network in Windows 95 would have been like. And so The Microsoft Network wasn't a program you loaded like CompuServe. It was part of the OS, with folder icons that looked just like real folders. It was a kind of version of the Web where you could browse online data the same way you browsed your file system. This is what made it cool. It wa…

Talk about data being separate from programs always reminds me what a good job Microsoft did with the spacial filesystem (that means one folder is one window, and they remember their location), single-document interface (a UI paradigm) and COM (a cross-process communication system). As a novice user not understanding a whole lot about the system, your documents were in the operating system and not in a specific progr…

> this still wasn't perfect and a lot of new users did think their documents were in programs, which might be why we gave that up

To this day there exist office workers—ones old enough that no, it's not because the were introduced to computers via smartphones—who use a computer for hours every single weekday day but get totally turned around in a file manager, and don't know even the extreme basics like how to copy and move files.

There are offices full of such folks, in non-tech offices, where the person who knows how to sort-of use a GUI file manager is the "computer whiz" they go to with questions.

Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

#102

Post by __natty__ »

jwr wrote: post #56

Large scrollbars! Windows with borders! What a relief! This has become a forgotten art: we focus so much on CONTENT these days that we forget that people want to use the mouse to scroll, and use the mouse to resize windows.

I agree. We focus on content where usually it’s so poorly structured and displayed it lacks final touches. I prefer wider scrolling bar than extra white space in the browser. Same goes for finder. I find old systems to be much more usable for me than modern ones

Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

#104

Post by crazygringo »

cube00 wrote: post #37

This is really impressive. It's exactly what I imagined the original Microsoft Network in Windows 95 would have been like. And so The Microsoft Network wasn't a program you loaded like CompuServe. It was part of the OS, with folder icons that looked just like real folders. It was a kind of version of the Web where you could browse online data the same way you browsed your file system. This is what made it cool. It wa…

> It also reminded me what an excellent job Wikipedia does with their hierarchical classification

As someone who once tried to use that supposedly hierarchical classification for data organization, it is unfortunately not excellent at all.

It is rather arbitrary, inconsistent, extremely incomplete, and not infrequently circular. Think of it more like a bunch of haphazardly applied tags that make perfect sense in the context of a single page, but quite frequently make very little sense when you look at the actual pages and sub categories that belong to a category. Category membership is just not something visible enough for it to wind up being organized and curated in any kind of systematically accurate way.

On the other hand, the presence of an infobox of a certain type is extremely reliable for categorizing many types of articles.

Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

#106

Post by keyringlight »

funimpoded wrote: post #101
pocksuppet wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk about data being separate from programs always reminds me what a good job Microsoft did with the spacial filesystem (that means one folder is one window, and they remember their location), single-document interface (a UI paradigm) and COM (a cross-process communication system). As a novice user not understanding a whole lot about the system, your documents were in the operating system and not in a specific progr…

> this still wasn't perfect and a lot of new users did think their documents were in programs, which might be why we gave that up To this day there exist office workers—ones old enough that no, it's not because the were introduced to computers via smartphones—who use a computer for hours every single weekday day but get totally turned around in a file manager, and don't know even the extreme basics like how to copy a…

The "files and folders" hierarchical tree model for a file system is one where I wonder about the limits or effectiveness of the skeuomorphism approach to convey such a concept. If you're coming from a place where information was generally held and organized on paper, it _should_ be natural that you can group files within a container like a folder, and the kind of folder the iconography showed should be able to contain sub-folders.

While many did pick up on the idea, where were the shortcomings? Were the early graphics not enough to build the mental link. Was it the common grid view of icons. Was it the icon being an abstract thing you needed to open to see the contents instead of looking at it directly (as previews on the icon which came later), was it things opening in separate windows. It's not as though other more visually 'rich' methods to show a file system such as 3D or animated took off.

There's also the modern version that gets brought up occasionally where people who are using devices with mobile instead of desktop OSes apparently don't know how to work with file systems to manage data, and presumably they'd have even less exposure to the physical paper concept that inspired it.

Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

#107

Post by brynnbee »

cousin_it wrote: post #90
brynnbee wrote: post #64

I did something similar for my personal site :) https://brynnbateman.com/

I lasted less than one minute. Can't read anything when there's an unstoppable animation in peripheral vision going blinky blinky blink.

Taking about clippy? If so that's good feedback! I'll make it disappear after a couple seconds. Thanks!

Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop

#110

Post by Yajirobe »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #108

Honestly, a testament to current Wikipedia design, because while it's fun to click around it's literally impossible to find what you need in this kind of GUI. (Geofile explorer is simply baffling.)

What does Wikipedia do differently? I don't think I have ever used Wikipedia's internal navigation - if I want to find something I usually type 'XYZ wikipedia' into Google and click the first link.
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