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Windows XP original theme was the best. Not at a nostalgic level only (which of course affects me and my memory), but I felt it was so easy to use and so easy to find everything. Today, Windows 10 control panel is a mess.
By far the best feature of XP theming was you could turn it off and it looked just Windows 2000 :)
This was followed shortly by installing MacOS on our PC.
Windows XP original theme was the best. Not at a nostalgic level only (which of course affects me and my memory), but I felt it was so easy to use and so easy to find everything. Today, Windows 10 control panel is a mess.
Which one?
Windows XP original theme was the best. Not at a nostalgic level only (which of course affects me and my memory), but I felt it was so easy to use and so easy to find everything. Today, Windows 10 control panel is a mess.
Either way, the best way to access everything you can do in Windows 10 is do it via the 'god mode' folder:
1. Create a new folder
2. Rename it to: GodMode.{ed7ba470-8e54-465e-825c-99712043e01c}
3. Open it
Windows XP original theme was the best. Not at a nostalgic level only (which of course affects me and my memory), but I felt it was so easy to use and so easy to find everything. Today, Windows 10 control panel is a mess.
The Control Panel in Windows 10 is now legacy, with most things now under Settings. Eventually it'll go away I guess, but some apps still install their own little control panel applets. Either way, the best way to access everything you can do in Windows 10 is do it via the 'god mode' folder: 1. Create a new folder 2. Rename it to: GodMode.{ed7ba470-8e54-465e-825c-99712043e01c} 3. Open it The 'GodMode' part of the nam…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you aware of the very large number of desktop environments and window managers available on *nix systems? “Skins” were popular in the windows ecosystem around XP, but it was far from the peak of customization.
It was definitely the peak. I was heavily involved in several communities, and also ran plenty of other desktops environments, but XP had the largest following by far. The sheer number of websites devoted to skinning XP was astounding. Popular websites had thousands and thousands of themes. Winamp 3 was thriving too. It was most definitely peak customization.
XP was the peak of desktop customizations. There were "theme packs", one of the most popular being a Vista Theme Pack. The teen in me, with a Nokia 6600 besides the computer, was in awe when a single installation of Vista Theme Pack and rebooting a couple times meant that everything on my 40GB HDD Pentium computer was changed from the login screen to icons, wallpaper, fonts, shell, file copy boxes, disk space meter,…
XP theme customizations wasn't even close to what you could do on Unix at the time.
It would be have been great if the different OS's had similar surface look & feel, to facilitate people being able to use both. I fear intellectual property concerns at the time may have discouraged MS from making this public.
Around that time I was running Stardock WindowBlinds, which had quite a few OSX widgets and whatnot available.
I loved those themes so much. What a fun way to kill time as a teenager.