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

Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

retrocomputing.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 84 posts

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#61

Post by wolvoleo »

saghm wrote: post #50
avadodin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a bit out of fashion these days. The main use-case was multiplexing terminals and, after tmux provided a solution that was usable by normal users, it seduced people away. Also, mouse-first tiling was introduced on Windows so nowadays it is almost universal to have a degree of tiling. They are nice for terminals and browsing properly-written web pages but for anything with an aspect ratio or a fixed size they…

> The main use-case was multiplexing terminals and, after tmux provided a solution that was usable by normal users, it seduced people away. Are you sure about this history? I'd always heard that GNU Screen had been popular for a while before tmux, and from double checking, Screen dates back to 1987, the same year that Windows 2.0 came out. tmux didn't come for another two decades.

Yes but screen didn't feature tiling when it first came out. That came much later.

It makes sense too because at that point most terminals were still physical with fixed dimensions. Most applications didn't handle terminal resizing yet. Especially on the fly.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#62

Post by opan »

SoftTalker wrote: post #40
WalterBright wrote: post #39

There was a major debate at the time on whether windows should be overlapping or non-overlapping. I was in the latter camp!

I switched to a tiling window manager years ago and never looked back, but had the luxury of much larger high-resolution screens. Would be hard to imagine it working well at 640x480 pixels. Even overlapping windows weren't great on such small screens, most people just maximized whatever they were working on.

Fullscreening windows is typically a feature of tiling WMs, and tiling often makes it easier to adjust the ratios of the splits in small amounts. I think tiling works well at all resolutions.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#63

Post by pjmlp »

zabzonk wrote: post #8

Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly. Things got a bit better with Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (and easier to program) but it wasn't really until Windows 95 that the whole thing came together. One thing you have to give Microsoft (at least back then) is that they did keep trying. And, speaking as a Windows developer, their documentation was very good.

I was found of Windows 3.1 though, it wasn't the Amiga that I envied from everyone else on my group, but I still could have my share of fun with Borland compilers.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#64

Post by pjmlp »

krige wrote: post #54

Meanwhile, the Amiga had the Boing demo in 1984, months before the system was actually sold. Smoothly liding screens and multitasking, baby. Also, stereo sound and nice visuals but that's not the point here.

I was kind of pissed that my parents sponsored getting a 386SX with Windows 3.1 alongside DR-DOS 5, instead of an Amiga, as everyone else on my group, in hindsight they bet on the right system.

To note, the hardware required to get OS/2 running would have added 1 000 euro more in today's money.

A couple of years later Comodore was gone and the history has been racounted endless times.

Still we don't give up keeping it alive somehow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJS5E4CPmpY

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#65

Post by hypercube33 »

jonhohle wrote: post #36
zabzonk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they weren't promoting an OS, they were promoting a user experience - A GUI that competed with the Mac. There were OS improvements too, but I have forgot what. The real improvements came with Win2K - one of the best versions of Windows ever.

Win2K was my favorite as well. The transparency was tasteful. Everything worked and for the most part didn’t crash. Many (most?) games worked. It ran great on a PIII 600mhz. Everything good about NT4 was better and most of the consumer friendly stuff starting to take shape. The disc was even gorgeous. Peak MS design and engineering.

I love me some Windows 2000 but when I got to XP I was running it with a BeOS theme. My peak of windows ux may be around Windows 10 Beta 1 - combined 7/8/10 transparent and start menu and was super fast. That said beta 1 of Win11 was also super fast so that makes me wonder what they broke under the hood.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#66

Post by hypercube33 »

jsolson wrote: post #52
conception wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were fake long file names though. At the actual dos layer they were 8.3. And the plug and play was terrrrible. I always turned it off. Ugh the plug and play modems/soundcards were trash.

You're not wrong, but PnP including the configuration basis for PCI which still sits at the config space layer of the latest and greatest PCIe. That's the piece I find so significant. I work with GPUs that mostly communicate over a proprietary C2C connection, but how does the OS find them? PCI enumeration.

IRQ conflict stuff still kinda haunts me.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#67

Post by zabzonk »

hulitu wrote: post #55
zabzonk wrote: post #8

Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly. Things got a bit better with Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (and easier to program) but it wasn't really until Windows 95 that the whole thing came together. One thing you have to give Microsoft (at least back then) is that they did keep trying. And, speaking as a Windows developer, their documentation was very good.

> Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly. Microsoft got back to the roots with Windows 10 and 11.

Either this is sarcasm or you and me are the only two people here that actually like Win11.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#68

Post by hyperman1 »

zabzonk wrote: post #8

Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly. Things got a bit better with Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (and easier to program) but it wasn't really until Windows 95 that the whole thing came together. One thing you have to give Microsoft (at least back then) is that they did keep trying. And, speaking as a Windows developer, their documentation was very good.

Part of it was the video mode. EGA 640x350x16 had 16 simultanous colors, from a palette of 64 possibilities. And non square pixels as a bonus.

They might have made better choices from the palette, but the limitations were severe.

If you really want to stab your eyes out, CGA had a mode with white, bright pink, light blue and black. I remember playing Keen on it. I've never seen that mode used for anything nice.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#69

Post by hyperman1 »

hypercube33 wrote: post #66
jsolson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but PnP including the configuration basis for PCI which still sits at the config space layer of the latest and greatest PCIe. That's the piece I find so significant. I work with GPUs that mostly communicate over a proprietary C2C connection, but how does the OS find them? PCI enumeration.

IRQ conflict stuff still kinda haunts me.

I remember. You get a tiny little sliver of sound and then press reset.

Re: Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?

#70

Post by xattt »

hyperman1 wrote: post #68
zabzonk wrote: post #8

Perhaps aesthetic - both Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were (to me at least) very ugly. Things got a bit better with Windows 3.0 and 3.1 (and easier to program) but it wasn't really until Windows 95 that the whole thing came together. One thing you have to give Microsoft (at least back then) is that they did keep trying. And, speaking as a Windows developer, their documentation was very good.

Part of it was the video mode. EGA 640x350x16 had 16 simultanous colors, from a palette of 64 possibilities. And non square pixels as a bonus. They might have made better choices from the palette, but the limitations were severe. If you really want to stab your eyes out, CGA had a mode with white, bright pink, light blue and black. I remember playing Keen on it. I've never seen that mode used for anything nice.

> bright pink, light blue

This is magenta/cyan mode is essentially the proto-cyberpunk aesthetic.

Post reply on HN