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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)

#271

Post by BrenBarn »

giantrobot wrote: post #240
BrenBarn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI in everything I used in my 30+ years of tech life. Agreed. I do wonder how much of it is personal, in that that UI hit at a certain formative time in my life. But ever since then it's been the benchmark that I evaluate all other UIs by. The lack of a "classic" mode in Win10 was one thing that motivated me to swit…

> I do wonder how much of it is personal, in that that UI hit at a certain formative time in my life. But ever since then it's been the benchmark that I evaluate all other UIs by. I know some of my preferences for UIs are informed by what I first really learned how to use. But I also have preferences that are informed by decades of heavy computer use. I despise UI widgets that just look like the window background wit…

Another thing is that part of my liking for the UI of that time is connected with the fact that it was consistent across all apps. Like you could set the font and color for a menu bar and every app would have that. This era of web apps drives me nuts because now it's switched to "this app should look the same for all viewers", when I want it to be "all apps should look the same when I use them".

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

#272

Post by LtWorf »

just6979 wrote: post #267
windowsrookie wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable "Wake for Network Access" in the battery settings if you want. It's a convenience option that lets MacOS check for new iMessages and other updates while it's asleep. That way all your messages are loaded immediately when you wake the device.

Do they have network performance problems such that messages need to be preloaded? Can't just fetch the new ones at wake up? That is a solution in search of a problem. I go from phone to laptop/desktop and continue messaging on various services all the time, and none of them sync until wake up and that's perfectly fine.

I presume apple wants to collect the data.

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

#273

Post by M95D »

LtWorf wrote: post #259
M95D wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not using a vm. I have an early 2000s computer running several old OSs. In Win98 I replaced the shell with the one from Win95 because it's faster. See 98lite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_remastering#98lite

I am not a great mathematical genius but I suspect that "early 2000s" came several years after 1995. Correct?

I'm sorry I don't have a museum at home to provide relevant demonstrations to random internet persons or bots.

Win95 start menu opens instantly on any computer that can run it. You either belive me or not.

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

#274

Post by expedition32 »

fainpul wrote: post #167
askvictor wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that was intentional, to prevent people using it plugged in, which would mean most people would keep it plugged in all the time, so it wouldn't be a wireless mouse anymore, but also degrade the battery lifespan.

I also believe that was intentional. But the reason was the typical Apple / Jobs hubris of knowing better than the users. The desktop looks cleaner with fewer cables, so they wanted to enforce use without the cable plugged in. I don't have a source for this, but I'm pretty sure I've read something like that a long time ago.

As someone who doesn't give a flying fuck about design this is exactly what bothers me with Apple.

Computers are not fashion or status symbol they are a tool. Although I do have a "ice" motherboard..

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

#275

Post by expedition32 »

gandalfian wrote: post #268
opan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many generations of that mouse design have there been now? Any changes to it? Wireless charging support could be a nice bandaid on that terrible design.

Modern wireless mice from logitech and microsoft last for a year or two on a pair of aa batteries. There is no point making them rechargeable any more. You can always use rechargeable aa nihms if you really want to, but personally I just have 50p of alkaline aa's and in two years I will have to change them again. Some things do get better :)

AA batteries have also immensely gone down in cost compared to the 1990s.

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

#276

Post by expedition32 »

titzer wrote: post #27
lateforwork wrote: post #5

Designers tend to be less open to feedback than developers. That, I think, helps explain why flat UI persists even though it has shown usability drawbacks. It also helps explain why overall usability feels like it's declining ever year — for instance, macOS Tahoe seems noticeably worse in usability compared to macOS Sequoia. Does anyone think Apple is going to rush out a release that fixes the excessive rounding of w…

It's all just rearranging deck chairs at this point. I feel like UX designers don't realize that their job should have a natural tailing off as we discover and lock in the good ideas and discard the bad. Even if the ideas aren't that great, users can at least get good at however it does work, if it stays constant. Instead, we just get more dice rolls, eyecandy, and frustration. I for one hate the power dynamic that O…

There was that one time when MS tried to do something radically different with windows 8...

The start button is eternal!

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

#277

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

BrenBarn wrote: post #155
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #4

I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI in everything I used in my 30+ years of tech life. I sincerely hope that one day we could go back to that road. If you want that achieved, please support me to join Apple/Microsoft to become the UI boss, fire all flat-design people and hire a small team to implement the older UI, then give a few passionate talks on…

> I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI in everything I used in my 30+ years of tech life. Agreed. I do wonder how much of it is personal, in that that UI hit at a certain formative time in my life. But ever since then it's been the benchmark that I evaluate all other UIs by. The lack of a "classic" mode in Win10 was one thing that motivated me to swit…

I think it is both nostalgic and pragmatic. I don't have to second guess what's the point of a widget, or even whether there is a widget. In default MacOS setting, the scrollbar is invisible, which literally spent me many minutes in some cases to even find that I could actually scroll down to find more options. That was completely crazy!

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

#279

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

imiric wrote: post #31
hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #4

I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI in everything I used in my 30+ years of tech life. I sincerely hope that one day we could go back to that road. If you want that achieved, please support me to join Apple/Microsoft to become the UI boss, fire all flat-design people and hire a small team to implement the older UI, then give a few passionate talks on…

After nearly 30 years of tech life myself, I've come to the realization that the best UIs are not graphical. They can have graphical elements mostly for visualization purposes, but all of them should be as minimal and unobtrusive as possible. Any interactivity should be primarily keyboard-driven, and mouse input should be optional. Forcing users to click on graphical elements presents many challenges: what constitute…

This might work well for power users, but common users may frustrate out. I do think the classic UI + keyboard driven menu clicks (e.g. ALT+some key combination) is the best case, where power uses can mostly use key stroke combinations to navigate the menu, while common users can click with a mouse.

Whatever the UI it is, being consistent is the most important. But sadly as you said, UI designers need to eat, too.

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

#280

Post by just6979 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #20
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/…

By your timeline, it means Microsoft only had institutional taste for about 3-4 years. A tiny fraction of the company’s lifetime. (If it helps, I do agree with you about those years being the most… design-coordinated: when Office felt like part of Windows) (I like to think that Visual Studio 2026 proves that the company can still do good desktop UI design; but it doesn’t help that every major first-party product is n…

Every major first party product has been using their own siloed UI framework since like 2003-ish. Visual Studio has always been one of the worst offenders. Sometimes the new UI components in a VS became the new normal for the rest of the first party stuff, but it was usually right about the time a new VS came out with a new paradigm. That's slowed a bit with the last bunch of VS releases being basically the same UI with different toolchains and default plugins, but it's still quite different from the rest of the OS. It's really pretty silly.
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