Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes • Hacker News Board

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#181

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

BoppreH wrote: post #168

thesuitonym wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Titlebar buttons are actually bad. The titlebar exists (or existed) for a reason, so you'd have somewhere you could grab to manipulate the window. Now it's kind of a guessing game with every app on where you can grab without causing the app to do something you didn't want.

If that's a problem for you, you have much to gain with better window management shortcuts. On KDE I have the Windows key + left click set to drag a window from anywhere , and win + right click to resize depending on the quadrant the cursor is on. It's incredibly satisfying not having to hunt titlebar empty spaces or thin edges.

There's a lot of mouse centric workflows, where you don't want to keep switching between mouse and keyboard all the time.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#182

Post by tom_ » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #49

bronlund wrote: post #32

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…

If you haven't tried it already, I've found it useful to get Windows to use the accent colour in the title bar and window borders: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/personalize-your...

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#183

Post by eddieh » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:54 PM UTC

thrownaway561 wrote: post #116

where's desqview? I ran my first BBS on that back in the 90s before switching over to OS/2 Warp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

That Wikipedia article needs a better screenshot. Otherwise, very interesting. And DESQview/X was X Window System on DOS with pre-emptive multitasking, wow.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#184

Post by renox » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

BoppreH wrote: post #75

bronlund wrote: post #32

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

We also lost clearly identifiable buttons, loading bars (replaced with throbbers), status bars that tell you what you're hovering over and what the program is doing, stable UIs to develop muscle memory, etc. But we did gain some nice things! - Tabs. - Titlebar buttons and other space-saving measures. - Document editors remembering unsaved changes. - Forms that validate on focus lost, instead of submission. - Ctrl+P m…

> - Tabs.

Tabs aren't really new: look at BeOS which could "tab" windows..

That said I agree with you that tab are really nice, especially the way VSCode manage them with the vertical list of opened files (I switched from vim to VSCode due to this feature).

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#185

Post by phkahler » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

kps wrote: post #176

BoppreH wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also lost clearly identifiable buttons, loading bars (replaced with throbbers), status bars that tell you what you're hovering over and what the program is doing, stable UIs to develop muscle memory, etc. But we did gain some nice things! - Tabs. - Titlebar buttons and other space-saving measures. - Document editors remembering unsaved changes. - Forms that validate on focus lost, instead of submission. - Ctrl+P m…

> - Tabs. Should have been a generic window manager feature.

Apparently Cosmic will even let you combine different apps in the same tab group. I read that but haven't confirmed.

Web browsers had to innovate because OSes, DEs and GUI toolkits stagnated. Tabs and better sandboxing came from web the browser.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#186

Post by gf000 » Tue, May 12, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

AlienRobot wrote: post #104

pjc50 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…

For the brief time I used Windows 11 the amount of times I placed a window over another and then clicked on the wrong window because I couldn't tell at first glance where one started and the other ended was absolutely ridiculous. I'm afraid that the core of the problem is something far more simple and fundamental. The people designing desktop apps today simply never learned the conventions that make desktop applicati…

> look and feel exactly the same as every other widget in the system

Which is what? Windows natively has like 4 official looks. You can click around the 2 (!) settings programs and pop open windows for basically every framework windows has created (and deprecated) in the last 2 decades.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#187

Post by Anonyneko » Tue, May 12, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

kps wrote: post #160

pjc50 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…

‘Took out usability features to make them "look nicer"’ is exactly how Steve Jobs gave us the double-click, undiscoverable and timing-sensitive.

And something my older relatives have trouble with to this day, no matter how much I adjust their double-click timing settings...

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#188

Post by vjvjvjvjghv » Tue, May 12, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #49

bronlund wrote: post #32

I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…

"Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer"."

With desktop OS I feel a lot of designers don't know how to use them. They grew up with phones and never use a desktop OS outside of work.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#189

Post by phkahler » Tue, May 12, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

BoppreH wrote: post #168

thesuitonym wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Titlebar buttons are actually bad. The titlebar exists (or existed) for a reason, so you'd have somewhere you could grab to manipulate the window. Now it's kind of a guessing game with every app on where you can grab without causing the app to do something you didn't want.

If that's a problem for you, you have much to gain with better window management shortcuts. On KDE I have the Windows key + left click set to drag a window from anywhere , and win + right click to resize depending on the quadrant the cursor is on. It's incredibly satisfying not having to hunt titlebar empty spaces or thin edges.

The reason they have to put all that crap in the title bar is because of all the other bad UI decisions that used up all the screen space.

Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes

#190

Post by vjvjvjvjghv » Tue, May 12, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

AlienRobot wrote: post #104

pjc50 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…

For the brief time I used Windows 11 the amount of times I placed a window over another and then clicked on the wrong window because I couldn't tell at first glance where one started and the other ended was absolutely ridiculous. I'm afraid that the core of the problem is something far more simple and fundamental. The people designing desktop apps today simply never learned the conventions that make desktop applicati…

"I couldn't tell at first glance where one started and the other ended "

Sometimes I am starting to feel like how my dad looked many years ago when I tried to teach him how to use Windows. He simply couldn't see the window borders. With the latest designs I am reaching this point too. I am struggling moving and resizing windows because I can't tell where the border is.