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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

#211

Post by tomxor »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #199
tomxor wrote: post #173

I can't believe how intensely functional the UI design of windows 95/98 was when looking back, and I say this as someone who intensely hates windows overall - but credit where it's due. Only when using it now is it clear how well they minimized ambiguity and cognitive load... everything is so frickin obvious. Contrast that with modern aesthetically obsessed UIs, ever ambiguous, lack of clear distinctions not in both…

I don't get it when people people use strong descriptors like "unease" and "jarring" when describing UIs. I don't think I've ever had a UI that made me feel fearful for my life/psychological well-being like that.

It's subconscious, if you don't try to notice you wont, instead you will just stop using things or dislike using things without knowing why specifically - or more subtle still, you will not be as efficient in those programs... The UI is inbetween what you are trying to interact with, so if it doesn't quite work right then the emotions are going to be more subtle and hard to differentiate because it's not your main focus.

You are more likely to intuitively get this once you have some experience attempting to design effective UIs (and actually trying to care about it).

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

#212

Post by ChrisArchitect »

Flexbox was originally invented in the late ’90s by Mozilla (using vendor prefixes — `display: -moz-box`, `-moz-box-flex`, etc.) in order to use CSS to style and lay out their Windows 9x app UI. We’ve come full circle.

https://twitter.com/frankyan/status/1253063046060109824

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

#213

Post by perl4ever »

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.

Most user interfaces are not designed any more with any intent to provide what's best for the user, because they are part of a product being sold to corporations/advertisers.

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

#214

Post by perl4ever »

Symbiote wrote: post #154
chrisseaton wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More than that, it's totally adversarial. I don't think the interface on a typical website is just sloppy or badly designed; it's designed to hamper access to information in a very sophisticated way, in order to prevent people from getting what they are looking for and leaving, but at the same time keeping them on the hook with the perception they are almost there.

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

#215

Post by ZenPsycho »

lioeters wrote: post #210
ZenPsycho wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i found this too, (but i can’t find a demo page) https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn

That one was a bit disappointing - here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/oFz7e0p Funny enough, just yesterday (before seeing this post), I was searching for re-creations of the Macintosh interface. Here's the best one I could find: Apple Macintosh System 7 UI in CSS - https://github.com/pfcode/system7css (Screenshot: https://imgur.com/ZEKolbS ) Aah, that nostalgic comfort.. Makes me dream of building my next toy "OS…

What would be nice is if there was something like a standard test or demo set of HTML for all these to work against, which would enable a way to switch themes.

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

#216

Post by orhmeh09 »

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.

I have heard this criticism so many times since Luna, and almost every single time I’ve noticed that Fisher-Price is misspelled by the critic. How can you trust someone like that?
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