98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by warning26 » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 9:37 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #153

warning26 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I liked rounded corners on Windows XP. It was the only version of Windows that looked professional and nice at the same time. It's interesting you say that, since I remember back at the time XP was released, so many people complained about how Windows XP had a "Fisher Price" UI that was distinctly non-professional. (Personally, I always liked XP's look.)

That’s why I always switched to XP silver instead of the default blue.

I always liked using Olive Green, mostly because no one else used it so it made me feel cool and different.

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

#182

Post by eternityforest » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 7:30 AM UTC

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #156

eternityforest wrote: post #155

Just beautiful. Even after all these years Microsoft's UI paradigm is still pretty much what I think a computer should look like. Sure we have new visual styles and high resolution now, but the core design language is still pretty much the same. It's really hard to improve on it. Even on mobile it just works. Most of the attempts at more modern newer things feel unpredictable, or very limited, or they hide everything…

Win 98's UI isn't very pretty (IMHO) but at least it's spare and relatively clean. Also it doesn't take a lot of resources to render. Compare with MS's more recent efforts. Personally I'm clinging to macOS 10.14 for as long as I can. More recent iterations have very much lost their way.

Aesthetically it's a bit vintage for non-nostalgia purposes, but IMHO the issues are purely things like fonts and colors and rounding, layout and behavior is excellent.

I'm not sure I could make it look any better. It's a pretty nice theme considering it was meant for VGA and seems to have been designed around a more limited set of colors.

Plus you'd be seeing it on a beige monitor with a wide bezel, with a full size beige keyboard, likely on a desk that also had a note pad, pens, and stationary. I'm guessing it also was meant to look somewhat obviously techno rather than the appliancelike looks of new stuff, because the fact that computers existed was a big deal and they probably wanted to highlight that.

I think they did a decent job with the context and what I imagine they wanted to communicate.

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

#183

Post by panzi » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #149

Beltalowda wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using the Windows 2000 background colour, #3a6ea5, on my dwm setup. It's perhaps a little bit sad that I can recite that from memory.

> It's perhaps a little bit sad that I can recite that from memory. No, it just tells a story of what you've been in to years ago. The color codes burned into my memory are: #aeaedd, #11ff11 and #dddd11. Who wants to guess where these came from?

Has the first one something to do with Sun Microsystems?

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

#184

Post by panzi » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

warning26 wrote: post #123

behnamoh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked rounded corners on Windows XP. It was the only version of Windows that looked professional and nice at the same time. Windows 10's design is just bland. I don't know why MS went ahead with this soulless design for so many years after Windows 8 came to be. Windows 11 tries to be nicer but really it's just a fancy cover on legacy designs left over from since Windows 3.1.

> I liked rounded corners on Windows XP. It was the only version of Windows that looked professional and nice at the same time. It's interesting you say that, since I remember back at the time XP was released, so many people complained about how Windows XP had a "Fisher Price" UI that was distinctly non-professional. (Personally, I always liked XP's look.)

Yeah, the huge blue window decoration with the giant red X and to a lesser degree the mismatched scroll bars really gave it a cheap look, IMO. The rest of the GUI design was actually quite nice. Just these extreme primary colors, overly large GUI elements, and mismatched colors did look bad to me.

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

#185

Post by panzi » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #153

warning26 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I liked rounded corners on Windows XP. It was the only version of Windows that looked professional and nice at the same time. It's interesting you say that, since I remember back at the time XP was released, so many people complained about how Windows XP had a "Fisher Price" UI that was distinctly non-professional. (Personally, I always liked XP's look.)

That’s why I always switched to XP silver instead of the default blue.

Same.