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Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

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Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#41

Post by Shared404 »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #11
nip180 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware of the very large number of desktop environments and window managers available on *nix systems? “Skins” were popular in the windows ecosystem around XP, but it was far from the peak of customization.

It was definitely the peak. I was heavily involved in several communities, and also ran plenty of other desktops environments, but XP had the largest following by far. The sheer number of websites devoted to skinning XP was astounding. Popular websites had thousands and thousands of themes. Winamp 3 was thriving too. It was most definitely peak customization.

Maybe peak community, I don't know about that.

But r/unixporn disagrees about peak amount of customization.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#42

Post by anoncake »

solarkraft wrote: post #33

Mac OS wasn't this ugly. Seriously: You can't just incorporate some design element and go "see, it looks like X". It won't. What most people making software seem to miss is that software look & feel isn't the design of widgets, but also click behavior, layouts, click paths, description texts, animations, delay after a click ... /tangentially related rant

As per the article, the theme was incomplete. Of course it was ugly.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#43

Post by ekianjo »

Ayesh wrote: post #6

XP was the peak of desktop customizations. There were "theme packs", one of the most popular being a Vista Theme Pack. The teen in me, with a Nokia 6600 besides the computer, was in awe when a single installation of Vista Theme Pack and rebooting a couple times meant that everything on my 40GB HDD Pentium computer was changed from the login screen to icons, wallpaper, fonts, shell, file copy boxes, disk space meter,…

> XP was the peak of desktop customizations.

Only if you consider computing is limited to Windows/Mac.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#44

Post by flohofwoe »

Ayesh wrote: post #6

XP was the peak of desktop customizations. There were "theme packs", one of the most popular being a Vista Theme Pack. The teen in me, with a Nokia 6600 besides the computer, was in awe when a single installation of Vista Theme Pack and rebooting a couple times meant that everything on my 40GB HDD Pentium computer was changed from the login screen to icons, wallpaper, fonts, shell, file copy boxes, disk space meter,…

I'd argue that Linux desktop was always the peak of customization via themes, and today remains the last platform to even allow such customization. Most Linux desktop themes don't look all that great (simply because of the '90% of everything is crap' rule), but there are a few really great ones that are aesthetically much more pleasing than both Win10 and macOS (of course this is very personal and subjective, which makes it all the more important to allow theming).

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#45

Post by raverbashing »

solarkraft wrote: post #33

Mac OS wasn't this ugly. Seriously: You can't just incorporate some design element and go "see, it looks like X". It won't. What most people making software seem to miss is that software look & feel isn't the design of widgets, but also click behavior, layouts, click paths, description texts, animations, delay after a click ... /tangentially related rant

Correct. This memo also applies to some Linux interfaces (usually one that begins with G and ends with ome)

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#46

Post by unnouinceput »

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems"

I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. Asia market was and still is dominated by Microsoft when it comes to desktop.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#47

Post by colejohnson66 »

nix23 wrote: post #31
Jaruzel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Control Panel in Windows 10 is now legacy, with most things now under Settings. Eventually it'll go away I guess, but some apps still install their own little control panel applets. Either way, the best way to access everything you can do in Windows 10 is do it via the 'god mode' folder: 1. Create a new folder 2. Rename it to: GodMode.{ed7ba470-8e54-465e-825c-99712043e01c} 3. Open it The 'GodMode' part of the nam…

>with most things now under Settings Yeah that's the problem, it's not. Microsoft should really be more focused on usability, the whole "i wanna be touch-panel" is just stupid, MS you are a PC! Even Apple said that.

You do get into a bit of a problem when you put Windows on a tablet such as the Surface line. I think that’s what Microsoft was trying to solve with Windows 8, but they failed very badly. They have fixed some things such as removing the Start Screen and putting back a Start Menu, but the fundamental problem of putting a desktop OS on a tablet (touch targets must be bigger than click targets) still exists. I don’t see them fixing it any time soon, but I’d love to be wrong.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#48

Post by dboreham »

unnouinceput wrote: post #46

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems" I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. As…

Perhaps he means "in the Bay Area"?
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