Windows 96 • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 96

#81

Post by mysterydip » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

There was a lot of focus on making things usable by a computer novice, which many customers at the time were: https://socket3.wordpress.com/2018/02/03/designing-windows-9...

Re: Windows 96

#82

Post by qbasic_forever » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

You might like XFCE and Xubuntu, it gives me a big Windows 95 feel after making a few tweaks like moving the taskbar to bottom. You can even go wild and go full Windows 95 theme: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95 It's kind of fun to have the retro looks and a bleeding edge Linux kernel.

Re: Windows 96

#83

Post by justusthane » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

stirlo wrote: post #48

nomy99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly doom didn't work. I was able to pick a level but the slayer wasn't moving. Still really impressive.

Doom worked for me in that I could select the menus, start a new game and move the character around. But it seems the “shoot” button is not working. From googling it seems “shoot” is mapped to the ctrl button which then I assume is not passed through the browser to the emulator :(

FWIW, Ctrl to shoot worked for me (MacOS, Firefox).

Re: Windows 96

#84

Post by qbasic_forever » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

SavantIdiot wrote: post #76

Is this an emulator or did someone re-write all of those apps?

Re-write, it's all just fun modern JS apps made in a style of Windows 95.

Re: Windows 96

#85

Post by tibbetts » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #44

asddubs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you feel that way, you might want to check out the serenityos project. it's a custom unix with a classic windows interface

The worst of both worlds. (I’d prefer Windows with a classic Unix interface.)

You mean VMS?

Re: Windows 96

#86

Post by srvmshr » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #11

pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

The mere presence of buttons that look like buttons, and static text that looks like static text, is innumerably better than the "ambiguous text and icons floating in a sea of flat white/blackspace" that UIs today seem to mostly consist of.

A lot of that (dis)credit historically goes to Jonny Ive. Every UI mostly just copied the flat, glassy look. KDE had flatter icons - but not in such disruptive way. They were still skeumorphic

Re: Windows 96

#87

Post by qatanah » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

Looks cool!

Where is my minesweeper and freecell?

Re: Windows 96

#88

Post by don-code » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

kijin wrote: post #35

thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

I remember those floppies... The 8th disk was kinda finicky on older hardware. I think that's where the installer actually tried to switch from DOS to Windows mode. If it failed for whatever reason, you had to start again from the 1st disk.

Funny.. my least favorite part of floppy installs of Debian is that it had exactly the opposite problem: reading floppies was hit-or-miss until _after_ disk 2 or 3.

Re: Windows 96

#89

Post by WaitWaitWha » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

thatwasunusual wrote: post #29

Pretty. :) Gives me PTSD-like flashbacks to the time when I was tasked with installing Windows 95 on 50+ computers on the local school. For the young(er), Windows was on 14-ish 3.5" floppy disks, and I had to do some heavy calculation and logistics copying those discs while installing the OS to make my effort as efficient as possible. IIRC, I managed to keep the installing cyclus going on 28 computers at a time, and…

I just want to quietly grumble, like an appropriately crotchety old man... '3.5" floppies? Bah! Try 8", and they were really floppy! Try installing AT&T Unix from those...'

Re: Windows 96

#90

Post by FpUser » Wed, Jul 28, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #5

These UIs definitely look outdated, but somehow they seem better than current Windows UIs. Not, sure if it's nostalgia or if there's something there.

Include other OSes UIs as well. I think those older UI look better because they are ergonomic. To me this quality is way more important than aesthetics.