Sun Solaris PPC (CDE) takes me back. I've built plenty of 3G/WCDMA telephony code on that thing. It never let me down.
Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
281–290 of 407 posts
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#282I really wish Windows 11 had a Windows 2000 mode. I want a grey, boxy UI, but I also want al the modern technologies Windows has introduced since—DirectStorage, D3D12, fast SSDs, device-independent pixels and vector UIs, all written directly against a Windows API that is modernised, safe, and easy to use. No React, no ads in my weather app; the only browser on my computer will be the browser itself.
Win2K was peak windows.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my biggest bugbears is losing the OK/Apply/Cancel concept with dialog boxes or settings windows. If I have a window with lots of settings that I want to experiment with then I've no problem with that setting taking effect immediately, but please give me the ability to back out all the changes I've tentatively made via a Cancel button.
I have a feeling you're in the minority. I've been using computers for 35+ years and I feel like I still don't understand OK/Apply/Cancel buttons. I still click Apply before clicking OK even if I know it's unnecessary. Plus, I don't believe Cancel reverts changes the user made if they clicked Apply already. So your suggestion would go against how the UX of OK/Apply/Cancel has historically worked.
Yeah, me too. The Amiga had a good idea with its Preferences programs (i.e. settings or options) - a "Use" button, which only saves to memory, separate from the "Save" button, which also saves to disk. So even if you make a mess of it, just reboot. Of course, in those days we were used to rebooting often, so that wasn't an issue. But if the idea had caught on, then by now we'd probably also have a "Revert" option that copies from disk to memory and activates it.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#284I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.
Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system. Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs. > in some applications they see…
One example of a UI being a result of research seems to be Windows 98. Much of the surface is gray, and a lot of the text is black. It might look boring, but that is how you get to use a little colour for things that need accent, and it will make a difference. Also in a factory, the walls are gray, but the fire extinguisher is red so that you can hardly miss it.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
For mouse users, clicking and dragging the scrollbar is the fastest and most intuitive way to scroll through a large document or list. (The scroll wheel, if you have one, is much slower.)
Until some dolt decides to build "infinite scroll" - I've seen dragging the scrollbar with the mouse cause JS exceptions to be thrown on some pages. One for the UI hall of shame.
I don't think I've seen a JS exception like that, but it drives me nuts when I'm dragging the scrollbar down for a quick scan of the page contents (especially if it's images or huge product tiles), and at some point it suddenly loads more in, scrolls down a chunk further before I can let go of the mouse button, and then I don't know where the hell I was.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#286I was still in school when OS/2 came out. I read about it in the magazines never touching it myself. I was impressed with its aesthetics but never knew with the clout of IBM why it never took off. My guess is internal politics killed OS/2 more than Microsoft?
Internal politics, yeah, maybe; because IBM certainly didn’t do much to market it. That, and bundling deals Microsoft had with OEM hardware vendors (if you want the discount, then Windows has to go on every machine). OS/2 advertised a “better Windows than Windows”. Problem was, software vendors then said, “great, now we don’t have to do an OS/2 port!”
Yes. But with IBM’s war chest at the time, it could have undercut anything Microsoft offered.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s hard to understand just how different NeXTStep (Did I capitalize that correctly?) felt from Windows — part of it was refresh rates, but part of it was going from 800x600 to 1132x800-ish on the monitor. You can't really get it from these screenshots, but I'll give an example of what you're talking about. I remember GEM when it came out, and it simply looked terrible. Not just their color choice, but simply that…
> The Amiga suffered similarly. Big and blocky and fuzzy. The Amiga was designed to look good on the crappiest TV around. It was a home computer, not a professional workstation. But if you had a nice monitor, high-res B&W screen modes were easily available.
Amiga OS 2.0 was a huge improvement in that regard! It had more of a 3D look.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I dislike how it is 'developers first' and not 'users first', There are user-centric and dev-centric Linux distros. Windows is "Microsoft cloud onboarding" centric, and the experience has been dramatically degrading for years. If that were not the case, why would senior executives at Microsoft say things like "we've heard you" and "we intend to reverse the suck in the coming year"? Even their management knows users…
> These things are objectively better on a modern KDE linux They are not. I use a KDE distribution at work. I regularly see GPU texture copy bugs like random lines across the middle of the display, or along the bottom edge. I use a 4K 144 Hz 16:9 display, and the Linux platform absolutely struggles with getting the scaling, resolution, and colour depth on all the dozens of GUI toolkits correct. Subpixel antialiasing…
You're mentioning a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the UI, and also, when it comes to wifi, that most people don't have any problems with.
Android has a horrible interface.
I'm not a regular KDE user, but it's a different universe than a barely customizable interface filled with generational cruft with garbage over the top of it spitting ads at you, saving everything to the cloud, etc.
Most Linux desktops are quiet. They may be a little buggy at times, but Windows is just as buggy at times.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#289I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.
I don't think we've lost these things so much as our preferences have now become a minority where once we were the majority. It seems completely normal. With the barrier to entry dropping, designs now match what is appealing to the largest number. Linux DEs are still quite customizable, and we're fortunate that niche desires can still be met there.
Re: Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
My pet peeve is spacing. My usual resolution is 1920x1080 (scaled or not) and it feels I could cram more information in an old 1024x768 desktop. You have to maximize most windows to get it to show enough information.
This drives me crazy. Even looking at these old screenshots you just know that these systems we outputting a display resolution lower than 1024x768. When I was checking out the MacBook Neo a while back I was disappointed that the resolution is not natively x2 scaled. It uses fractional scaling when macOS handles fractional scaling quite poorly. I've set the resolution on my M1 MBP to 1280x800 so it was x2 scaled and…
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