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The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

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Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#211

Post by moron4hire »

omnibrain wrote: post #180
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also stupid in terms of screen real estate. Earlier Word/CorelDraw/etc had a thin toolbar with lots of functionality. Barely occupied any space at just 800x600 resolution. Nowadays, the ribbon and all other junk occupy a huge portion of the screen, even at 1920x1080. It’s amazing how little screen area today actually shows the useful part of a document. Instead of the Ribbon, a thin context sensitive toolbar wou…

> It’s also stupid in terms of screen real estate. You can't really blame MS that around the same time screen manufacturers started to switch to 16:9 for cost reasons and cheap laptops all only offered a 1366x786 resolution.

The whole "UIs got smaller because the aspect ratio got more rectangular" thing never really made sense to me because 786 > 600. The screens got bigger in both dimensions, regardless of them getting bigger in one more than they got bigger in the other.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#212

Post by jaffa2 »

okanat wrote: post #25
linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon Ribbon also has a similar research behind it, just like Windows 95. For what they designed it, allowing beginners to discover all the functionality that's available, it works perfectly. I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. I also like it since it is very tastefully ma…

The ribbon doesnt work for because the options change and visibility is decided by how big my windows is.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#213

Post by maxloh »

lunar_rover wrote: post #71
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the topic of flat design specifically, developers are likely just as culpable. Back when it was just starting to catch on, by my observation some of the quickest to adopt it were solo developers because it's way easier to build a passable looking app with flat UI since that doesn't require any design talent.

A passable looking modern flat UI has a lot behind it, just like skeuomorphism and anything in between. Unless something like https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.12.0/spectacle-noti... is what you consider to be passable looking of course.

For reference, Windows' notification look this way: https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/I4VO9qHrzphTHsZHU5eI73sLL9k=/7...

The screenshot you posted is likely from KDE Plasma. The project don't have much funding to hire a UI/UX designer IMHO.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#214

Post by cogman10 »

VorpalWay wrote: post #149
lunar_rover wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A passable looking modern flat UI has a lot behind it, just like skeuomorphism and anything in between. Unless something like https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.12.0/spectacle-noti... is what you consider to be passable looking of course.

That looks perfectly functional to me? It only looks a bit ugly because the screenshot appears to have been of a very small part of the screen that got blurry when it was blown up to a larger size. I'll take function over for every day. (I daily drive KDE, it works fine and doesn't get in my way. Most of the time I'm either in my editor or the terminal emulator anyway.)

This is also a plasma 5 example. Plasma 6 cleaned it up.

But I also agree. KDE is pretty close to my ideal for a desktop environment. It's pretty close to a windows 7 feel which is perfect for me.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#215

Post by specialist »

jaffa2 wrote: post #208
specialist wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their laptop touchpads are the only Apple "pointer" input device I've ever liked. (And by extension, the iPhone and iPad.) I hate myself every time I settle for yet another disposable Microsoft mouse. Though, I would have killed for an Apple Pencil, back when I was a CAD jockey. For me, the butterfly keyboard was Apple's mostest worstest user interface design decision. (Doubly so because it persisted for so long. I l…

> For me, the butterfly keyboard was Apple's mostest worstest user interface design decision. I really liked the butterfly kb. It was responsive, and you could hit the key cap anywhere and it would register.* Subsequent mac book keyboards imo are all terrible and suffer from the terrible issue of sponge-ness that means i can literally press a key cap in a slightly off centre location and it Does Not Register. Its lik…

Ya, you're right. When it worked, it worked well. A point worth remembering, thanks. Alas, they just weren't robust enough, interferring with my work.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#216

Post by vee-kay »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #46
linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma…

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Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#217

Post by frizlab »

linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

But did you use 95 when you were young? I was using primarily MacOS at the time and always found windows particularly bad at everything, including UI/UX. I guess we like what we know…

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#218

Post by [deleted] »

LtWorf wrote: post #193
M95D wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of drivers and PnP and especially USB. When you load Win3.1, WinNT4 and lower, drivers load without scanning for hardware presence. It's just a disk to memory copy. In Win95, the first PnP OS, it scans for PnP hardware at every boot. That's slow. To prove my point, you could try loading some of the USB drivers for DOS or one of the ISA PnP configuration utilities (such as ICU - Intel Configuration Utilit…

Besides the boot (which windows 3 didn't even do so I don't see why we are comparing it), from clicking on the start menu the 1st time after boot, to the start menu actually appearing on screen it would take 1-2 minutes to populate on windows 95, while on windows 3 on the same machine there would be no such issue.

[deleted]

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#219

Post by vee-kay »

bartread wrote: post #185
linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

I think the interesting larger observation here is the perhaps both Microsoft and Apple peaked in their usability design between the mid-90s and late-aughts (I think Apple stayed at their peak for longer, particularly when you start thinking about the iPhone which, at the time, was streets ahead of what any other company was offering), and have both been on a down trend ever since. Why is that though? Why does that a…

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Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#220

Post by jgalt212 »

linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon

What a waste screen real estate, IMO. The only reason it's still around is because screens are now 2X bigger, and screen real estate has become cheaper.

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