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

The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

dl.acm.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 290 posts

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#131

Post by f1shy »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #46
linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma…

> release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing

I’m still trying to understand who came with the idea of charging the mouse from under, instead of from a position that would allow to use the mouse while charging…

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#132

Post by Sharlin »

f1shy wrote: post #131
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma…

> release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing I’m still trying to understand who came with the idea of charging the mouse from under, instead of from a position that would allow to use the mouse while charging…

Textbook case of form over function. Either an engineering constraint forced by the design and deemed an acceptable trade-off by higher-ups, or maybe more likely, the designer just thought a visible charging port would’ve ruined their design.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#133

Post by hakfoo »

zozbot234 wrote: post #113
crooked-v wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supposed to be the "Share" menu, but that stopped meaning anything very fast because they just crammed everything into it for lack of other UX for system services. Macs have the problem multiple times over, because now they have the normal menu bar and toolbar, and a Share menu that just gets arbitrary stuff dumped into by App Store apps, and the Services menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and t…

Windows Explorer supports its own equivalent to the "Share" menu, dubbed "Send To". It was there already in the original Windows 9x. Printers are generally not listed though, there is a separate "Print" option instead.

There's a very reasonable argument behind that, though.

"Sending" a file to another disc or on the network is non-transformative. At the far end, it's still a file.

But "printing" is inherently transformative-- you're expecting to get something clearly not a file (print-to-file pseudo-printers excepted).

I can see the desire for minimalism-- having seperate rows for "share/send" and "print" is, well, two seperate rows. But if you offer adaptable and configurable interfaces, I could see suppressing one or both depending on context or user preferences. (You have no external drives or registered share-recipients? No "Send To/Share")

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#134

Post by Sharlin »

f1shy wrote: post #130
zzo38computer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Status lights can be helpful, although they should be dim, and should be red or green (or possibly yellow) rather than blue or white (unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours).

Red and green, if the color has some meaning, should be avoided. 10% of males have problems with that colors (dyschromatopsia) specially with led colors. For indicators blue and white are very easy to see, even in not optimal lightning. The option to disable them is nice. > unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours In that case you will end up with Christmas decorations. Better solu…

Mixing red and green should be avoided. There’s no problem using either alone. Human color vision is the least sensitive to blue light, so a blue indicator led has to be made brighter than an equivalent red or green led to be as visible in bright ambient lighting. But that makes blue leds disastrous in low light, where the opposite is the case (vision is the most sensitive to blue). Of course there never was any reason for blue standby lights except the fact that blue leds had novelty value and looked futuristic compared to boring old red and green leds.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#135

Post by hakfoo »

jedberg wrote: post #92

If you want a true lesson on design, check out Ask Tog, starting here: https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/ Tog was the original design engineer for the Mac, and arguably one of the first true HCI engineers. Then read the rest of his website. He goes into where Windows tried to copy Mac and got it horribly wrong. One of my favorite examples is menu placement. The reason the Mac menus are at the to…

I understand the Fitt's Law concepts behind a top menu bar, but I wonder if this is a scenario with moving goalposts.

On a 1984 Mac, you had like 512x384 pixels and a system that could barely run one program at a time. There was little to no possible uncertainty as to who owned the menu bar. (Could desk accessories even take control of the menu bar?)

But once you got larger resolutions and the ability to have multiple full-size programs running at once, the menu bar could belong to any of them. Now, theoretically, you should notice which is the currently active window and assume it owns the menu bar, but ISTR scenarios where you'd close the window but the program would still be running, owning the menu bar, or the "active" window was less visually prominent due to task switching, etc.

The Windows design-- placing the menu inside the window it controls-- avoids any ambiguity there. Clicking "File-Save" in Notepad couldn't possibly be interpreted as trying to do anything to the Paintbrush window next to it.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#136

Post by opan »

linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

I have some nostalgia for XP, especially the Zune theme (separate download, black+orange recolor of the default), but due to the Classic theme being available in so many versions and often using it either for more performance or easier ricing (can easily swap the colors and fonts via official settings), I'm also nostalgic for the Win95 or so UI. I think 2000 was the oldest I remember actually using, but I used XP a lot and 2000 not very much.

In the last decade+ of using GNU/Linux, I've also become very attached to bitmap fonts and simple solid colors, while I've grown to dislike curves and transparency. So sometimes I see a screenshot of some very old Mac OS version I never even used, and it just looks good, sharp, and clean to me, no real nostalgia involved.

I think SerenityOS's vision of a unix-like environment with classic Windows UI is genius. I don't follow the project that closely, but on paper it does seem like a good idea.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#137

Post by opan »

f1shy wrote: post #131
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma…

> release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing I’m still trying to understand who came with the idea of charging the mouse from under, instead of from a position that would allow to use the mouse while charging…

How many generations of that mouse design have there been now? Any changes to it? Wireless charging support could be a nice bandaid on that terrible design.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#138

Post by opan »

hakfoo wrote: post #133
zozbot234 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows Explorer supports its own equivalent to the "Share" menu, dubbed "Send To". It was there already in the original Windows 9x. Printers are generally not listed though, there is a separate "Print" option instead.

There's a very reasonable argument behind that, though. "Sending" a file to another disc or on the network is non-transformative. At the far end, it's still a file . But "printing" is inherently transformative-- you're expecting to get something clearly not a file (print-to-file pseudo-printers excepted). I can see the desire for minimalism-- having seperate rows for "share/send" and "print" is, well, two seperate ro…

Obligatory:

https://retrohacker.substack.com/p/bye-cups-printing-with-ne...

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#139

Post by dingaling »

etbebl wrote: post #87
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also stupid in terms of screen real estate. Earlier Word/CorelDraw/etc had a thin toolbar with lots of functionality. Barely occupied any space at just 800x600 resolution. Nowadays, the ribbon and all other junk occupy a huge portion of the screen, even at 1920x1080. It’s amazing how little screen area today actually shows the useful part of a document. Instead of the Ribbon, a thin context sensitive toolbar wou…

You know the ribbon can be collapsed so that it behaves more like a drop-down menu, right?

It doesn't really act that way, as (1) it can't be accessed with keyboard shortcuts and (2) it's difficult to scan for the desired feature as it's a visual jumble of buttons and text. Oh, and it might not be visible! Sometimes features can only be found in pop-out dialogs.

Having used Office products for 30+, my most-used feature of the Ribbon is Search, because I don't have time to waste hunting through a poorly-organised heap.

Post reply on HN