Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Windows98 Running in the Browser

copy.sh

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 271 posts

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#211

Post by 72deluxe »

derefr wrote: post #198
rightbyte wrote: post #138

It's funny how I find Win98 more user friendly and logical than Win10. Just look at the start menu where thing are sorted in folders. No ads optimizations anywhere. Just an annoying shortcut on the desktop for MS Internet. Is it possible to make a program like the sheep.exe nowadays? It is awesome.

What is the point of start menu folders? How often do you browse through your programs? When I want to do something, I hit the launcher key-combination of whatever OS I'm in (the Win/Super key in Win8/10 or GNOME; ⌘Space in macOS) and then type the first few characters of the name of what I want. If I know the search database is up-to-date (i.e. I haven't just installed the program, I then just immediately hit Enter…

I used folders all the time and knew that I could type Windows, P, A, N Enter and Notepad would open. It took milliseconds.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#212

Post by Joeri »

nolok wrote: post #88
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #74

Back when the system settings could be reached with less clicks, were organised in a logical way and didn't use most of the screen as white-space.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

The frustrating part is that when you actually try to use windows 10 on a tablet in tablet mode you find out very quickly how bad it is as a tablet os because of a lot of paper cuts. That is microsoft in a nut shell: lack of following through.

Take for example the fluent design, which by itself is a good design, but after three years is still not consistently applied in windows, let alone microsoft’s first party apps. Meanwhile apple has redesigned all of the ui of the os and all first party apps, in one year. That is what following through looks like. It is embarrassing for microsoft how much better apple is at rolling out design changes.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#213

Post by overcast »

nolok wrote: post #88
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #74

Back when the system settings could be reached with less clicks, were organised in a logical way and didn't use most of the screen as white-space.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

What's worse is that MacOS already started down that path. Just look at Big Sur with all of the bullshit widgets and crap now. How I loathe widgets.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#215

Post by rightbyte »

derefr wrote: post #198
rightbyte wrote: post #138

It's funny how I find Win98 more user friendly and logical than Win10. Just look at the start menu where thing are sorted in folders. No ads optimizations anywhere. Just an annoying shortcut on the desktop for MS Internet. Is it possible to make a program like the sheep.exe nowadays? It is awesome.

What is the point of start menu folders? How often do you browse through your programs? When I want to do something, I hit the launcher key-combination of whatever OS I'm in (the Win/Super key in Win8/10 or GNOME; ⌘Space in macOS) and then type the first few characters of the name of what I want. If I know the search database is up-to-date (i.e. I haven't just installed the program, I then just immediately hit Enter…

When the start menu gets long and even more when it overflows it is nice to have folders for eg. games, office apps, image apps etc.

The main reason I like the start menu is that I sometimes forget the name of applications I use seldomly and I forget what apps I have installed.

Edit: One thing I forgot to whine about is the configuration panel. In the old one you had everything in front of you instanly. The new one is a joke and I never seem to remember which feutures you need can change in the "mobile friendly" blue one, or the kinda a folder one.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#216

Post by zozbot234 »

Joeri wrote: post #212
nolok wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

The frustrating part is that when you actually try to use windows 10 on a tablet in tablet mode you find out very quickly how bad it is as a tablet os because of a lot of paper cuts. That is microsoft in a nut shell: lack of following through. Take for example the fluent design, which by itself is a good design, but after three years is still not consistently applied in windows, let alone microsoft’s first party apps…

Yup, but GNOME3 is really the best tablet experience around (unless you really need proprietary on-device "apps", as with Android/iPadOS). The Activities overview screen is extremely intuituve and way better than whatever the Windows 8 folks came up with, and the GUI widgets are touch-ready in every GNOME-native app.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#217

Post by philliphaydon »

MisterTea wrote: post #189
blauditore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. People were just not used to a full-screen, search-focused start menu. A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI. The next version was then a slightly milder version of it, and at the same time people had gotten used to it a bit, so most were happy with Windows 7 and are now h…

> To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. Perhaps in a vacuum it might work. But this is the real world were hypothesis are just that. > A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI No. People were apparently overwhelmed by system instability and resource hogging (mainly hard drive grinding). I don't remember people co…

> No. People were apparently overwhelmed by system instability and resource hogging (mainly hard drive grinding). I don't remember people complaining about the UI's usability. Though there were UI complaints which were mostly echos of the same complaints leveled at the glossy "Teletubby" XP theme.

People complained about memory usage even tho it was just windows precaching. Something they don’t complain about now.

The issue with vista was drivers. And then when 7 came out everyone is like oh yay everything works. Even tho it was using the Drivers from vista.

Majority of the vista complaints are silly. It was never as bad as everyone made out to be. Just the same old cool fad to hate on MS.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#218

Post by buran77 »

Klinky wrote: post #209
buran77 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and resource hogging Memory usage used to be a major complaint (possibly the biggest) even if it was made clear repeatedly that the OS was simply keeping more stuff in RAM instead of dumping it to disk specifically to improve performance. A mechanism that stuck to these days. That memory isn't marked that obviously in the Task Manager now, and memory is is no longer such a luxury so people don't complain anymore. B…

I am pretty sure Windows 7 was pretty highly praised upon its release and considered vastly superior to Vista, and at least on par with XP as far as usability.

Vista was a blip on the radar and nobody ever really used it as a reference point for anything other than ridicule. XP was running strong even in 2014 when it went out of support so it makes sense this was the bar to pass for Win 7. And the vast majority of users jumped from XP to 7 as the numbers confirm.

In 2009 when Windows 7 was launched, Vista's market share (all desktop OSes) reached the all time peak of 18%. At the same time the (then) 8 year old Windows XP had 72%.

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#219

Post by thatlongthrow1 »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #148
Tade0 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the omnibox is the only way I know how access certain settings. I have no idea where they are located in this maze of categories and subcategories.

Amen! The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. For me, without the OmniBox Windows would be unusable by now. I consider Windows 2000 to be peak Windows UX. It was all downhill from there.

Me, windows 7: *turns off as much indexing and search rubbish as possible.

Me, windows 10: "Oh please search box deliver me the local result I need, without your knowledge I would be lost in this wasteland of cobbled together UI design."

Re: Windows98 Running in the Browser

#220

Post by flohofwoe »

blauditore wrote: post #166
nolok wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean before windows tried to be designed as a a tablet OS while being on desktop for 8.0, failed on both as easily predicted, and then refused to admit the mistake ever since beside the one mandatory change of adding a normal start button / menu back? That full screen start view was one hell of an abomination....

To be honest, I think it was not that bad from a usability point-of-view, agnostic of history. People were just not used to a full-screen, search-focused start menu. A similar thing happened with Vista, people were overwhelmed with the wildly different UI. The next version was then a slightly milder version of it, and at the same time people had gotten used to it a bit, so most were happy with Windows 7 and are now h…

> It's interesting to see how strongly change-averse most people are when it comes to those things.

Change is only good if it improves things. Win8 and later were a massive usability regression for keyboard+mouse/trackpad users. Windows 10 rolled some changes back, but those that weren't rolled back are still an inconsistent mess (and with no signs of improvement, that's the actually worrying part). There's no rational way to call the Windows 10 start menu or system settings an improvement over Windows7 all the way back to Windows95. And both the start menu and the control panel area weren't all that great to begin with in Win95+, but somehow Windows 8 and 10 still managed to make it worse.

PS: The main reason why the Win8 start screen and Win10 start menu are bad seems to be that they assume that a Windows application is just the executable, like on macOS. But Windows applications usually have more files associated with them, mostly other tools, readme files, uninstallers. Visual Studio is the best example, it's nearly impossible to find the tools associated with Visual Studio in Windows 10 without installing a proper start menu replacement. And Visual Studio is a Microsoft product. Go figure.

Post reply on HN