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98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

jdan.github.io

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Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#151

Post by tomcooks »

Scapeghost wrote: post #104
djsumdog wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95 and XP both had good scroll bars. XP styling was pretty good for its era. Modern day scroll bars are atrocious on a lot of toolkits.

> XP styling was pretty good for its era. XP was skinned like a very tacky Fischer Price toy, with garish colors and oversized elements that would have been more at home on a touchscreen. I don't think anyone called it a good theme unsarcastically. Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? They just take screen space and billions of people do fine without them on Macs and mobile OSes.

> very tacky Fischer Price toy

As in "something even a child could use"? Indeed

> Why do we even need always visible scroll bars?

To know how long the page is, to know what state we are BEFORE we interact with it, to know that there is no such a thing as "above the fold" or other nonsense, etc.

Now allow me to ask you, with no intention to sound like an ass: why would you hide bars apart from saving 20px (which I assume was Windows' default, but let's say 100px for discussion' sake)?

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#152

Post by andy_ppp »

xattt wrote: post #134
andy_ppp wrote: post #81

My god they have even managed to switch off the anti aliasing of fonts! Looks so accurate I doubt I would be able to tell the difference, well done.

I can’t decide whether the aliasing is part of the aesthetic or not.

I am pretty sure it’s deliberate, I mean did ‘98 have clear type yet? Did it work?

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#153

Post by tomcooks »

chrisseaton wrote: post #114
worble wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you want to know the relative length of a page without scrolling first? What if it's one of those webpages with a full height hero as the first element and no indicator you can actually scroll? What if I want to click and drag the scroll to a specific location but have to take wild flailing guesses at where the scrollbar actually is because it keeps going invisible?

There’s always obscure use cases like this. You could go on forever listing individual people’s wants and you’d end up with a Homer car. We design interfaces for the many first, and keep them as simple as possible but not simpler.

> We design interfaces for the many first, and keep them as simple as possible but not simpler.

The many being able bodied, literate, touch-device-carrying people? I am not sure interfaces should be designed like that.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#154

Post by Symbiote »

chrisseaton wrote: post #135
noisem4ker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me asking myself "how long is this article" before I start reading it is a distraction? Too bad, I can't help but want to know. I could've learned that instantly by unconsciously glancing at the scroll indicator, but instead I have to move the whole content down for it to appear (possibly with a whizz-bang animation, no less), introducing friction and further distracting me from the content. Good job, I guess.

I don't know what you tell you - most people don't think about user interfaces like this. As we can clearly tell by people not designing them like this anymore.

As far as I'm concerned, the people designing modern user interface styles are not doing it for my benefit.

They're doing it to sell adverts (removing the boundaries between content, forms and advertising), track where I'm looking (he's opened the scroll bar! our content is engaging/boring!), adopt fashions to make their competitors appear dated and justify their own careers.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#155

Post by zeven7 »

jannes wrote: post #99

I noticed that it's using box-shadow for the "3d effect" on buttons and window borders. I'm a bit disappointed they didn't use the "inset" or "outset" border-style [0] which pretty nobody uses anymore these days. I thought this kind of design is pretty much why these border-styles exist. [0]: https://htmldog.com/references/css/properties/border-style/

From what I recall, the shading for inset and outset is left up to the browser and is different for different browsers.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#156

Post by nobleach »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #85
schrijver wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t be surprised :) The Windows 95 aesthetic is already back into fashion, I see it a lot on flyers, web art… just not yet in computer applications! I guess that’s a matter of time. Check out the flyer for this party: https://highclouds.org/highclouds-online-antivirus-party-mag... They used vectors, looks like the Windows 95 aesthetics that was so connected to pixel survives this transition quite well!

That's later than Windows 95 - maybe 98 or 2000. Windows 95 didn't support gradient titlebars.

Some of us replaced our GDI.EXE, GDI32.DLL, SHELL.DLL, etc and installed TweakUI.exe to get those Windows 98 features a year or so earlier....

Then again, I was a Memphis beta tester (legitimately, not the "I found these rars on a warez site" variety of "beta tester") So I "enjoyed" some of those features pretty early on.

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#159

Post by Robotbeat »

tomcooks wrote: post #151
Scapeghost wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> XP styling was pretty good for its era. XP was skinned like a very tacky Fischer Price toy, with garish colors and oversized elements that would have been more at home on a touchscreen. I don't think anyone called it a good theme unsarcastically. Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? They just take screen space and billions of people do fine without them on Macs and mobile OSes.

> very tacky Fischer Price toy As in "something even a child could use"? Indeed > Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? To know how long the page is, to know what state we are BEFORE we interact with it, to know that there is no such a thing as "above the fold" or other nonsense, etc. Now allow me to ask you, with no intention to sound like an ass: why would you hide bars apart from saving 20px (which I ass…

The unnecessary lack of visible scroll bars is super annoying to me, too. UI fashions at the expense of clarity. And let’s not even mention scrolljacking...

Re: 98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

#160

Post by Gracana »

noisem4ker wrote: post #127
the_pwner224 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting perspective. I guess for those of us on Mac and some Linux-ish OSs, we expect things to just work and look standard. I don't use mac but I think most users are accustomed to applications fitting in with the system, and Apple seems to make a big deal on both macOS and their mobile OSs about this. This is also true on the Gnome desktop where every single Gnome really looks and feels like a Gnome a…

>on Windows basically every app is a mess of different themes and window decorations My experience disagrees, as long as we're not talking about Electron or UWP applications. Your description sounds exaggerated.

Just about every Windows program I use is styled differently from the others.

Right now I'm running Outlook, Firefox, Solidworks Electrical, Solidworks, Skype for Business, and ECi M1. Outlook uses the latest style ribbon and flat UI, Firefox uses its own style for everything, Solidworks Electrical uses the old style ribbon UI with panes and stuff from I think .NET toolkits, Solidworks uses its own ribbon and UI theme that's unique to it, Skype is inexplicably blue with its own blue icons, M1 uses its own ribbon style and has somewhat standard controls on a gray background, with a custom tree view that scrolls horizontally when you click on things...

I also have PLC and HMI programming software. Omron CX-Programmer, Sysmac Studio, and NB-Designer, which all look different from each other and any of the other software I'm running.

I think it's harder for me to pick two programs that look alike than it is to find ones that look different.

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