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A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

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Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#81

What I love about these old designs is how obvious everything is. You just can't miss the button or the tabs. Now after all this skeuomorphic design revolution it's so hard to tell, is it a button, text, link etc. It probably looks better but it is at the cost of extra thinking for the user.

This is such a hacker news comment. Somehow a group of people supposedly good at using computers struggle to work out what a button is while the average user seems to have no problems.

I'm not "struggling". I just see the pointless regression. Why defend it? What is gained by defending something worse as if it was progress? Why can't we recognize flat everything as the failure it is, and make good UI again?

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#82
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real hacker news-ish comments are the ones like yours posting cheap "gotchas" and pointing out hypocrisies where there are none every time someone says something similiar. An engineer sees structural problems with buildings and bridges where people who use them everyday don't. An english major can see a problem with the language used in a newspaper where thousands of other readers don't. There is nothing unusual…

Are programmers really UI/UX experts, though? If you said a programmer pointing out how stupid programming is shown in film you might have a point but I really don't think many of these people pointing out their perceived flaws in UI/UX are experts. In any thread that mentions UI/UX something like this always comes up where someone is bemoaning current UI/UX and hearkening to the good old days of when UI/UX was good,…

> hearkening to the good old days of when UI/UX was good, which just so happens to coincide with when they really started getting into computing

Nah. I started out with Workbench 1.3, which was flat. Because they literally hadn't the colors available to do more. I didn't use them, but Mac and Atari ST were the same. Then came Workbench 2.0, then MUI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_User_Interface ), and I recognized and enjoyed the improvements. I love change, I just don't love regression. Why would I?

And as for experts:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-ui-less-attention-caus...

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a hacker news comment. Somehow a group of people supposedly good at using computers struggle to work out what a button is while the average user seems to have no problems.

I'm not "struggling". I just see the pointless regression. Why defend it? What is gained by defending something worse as if it was progress? Why can't we recognize flat everything as the failure it is, and make good UI again?

Objective evidence may be hard to come by. That said, the studies Microsoft did to produce Windows 95 must have paid off, IMO. Despite its different UX it felt significantly easier than Windows 3 and DOS.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#84
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a hacker news comment. Somehow a group of people supposedly good at using computers struggle to work out what a button is while the average user seems to have no problems.

The average user has no idea how to use most UIs these days. I have to explain basics of her phone to my mum every time I try to video call her. The difference between tech people and people like her is that it's easier for us to notice these issues and talk about them, while - if something doesn't work for her - she'll just shrug and go tend to the garden.

In my experience, these kind of people are scared of experimenting because they think they might screw something up, and the user-interface doesn't help. My dad has an iPhone, and he doesn't know anything about it. I doubt he's ever closed a browser tab, rearranged his home screen, or switched a running app by double-pressing the home button, and he has problems with the most basic of things. He also has an Apple watch, and the only functions he knows how to use on it are answering calls and activating voice messages ("walkie-talkie"). He has no idea how to sync his phone to the car's radio via Bluetooth, and he still names his contacts in his address book like "AAA Wife" and "AA Home Phone" because he doesn't know there's a favourites button. And he simply doesn't care. He just continues struggling to use his phone without really trying to learn it. My 82-year-old grandmother was better with technology than he is.

With people like this who didn't grow up with tech, everything has to be intuitive and obvious. An iPhone certainly isn't. My dad never had trouble with his Nokia, because everything was laid-out in front of him in a one-dimensional way, and all he had to do was scroll down the list and everything was easy to find. I would never put a computer in front of him, but if I did it would hb a Windows 7 computer.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#85
post #20

I really enjoy the Aero glass effect from Windows 7 and feel unfortunate when Microsoft removed it in Windows 8. I tried to disassemble DWM to find out its implementation but it did not work, since I have no experience in reverse engineering and Win32 developing. This project seems to recreate a pretty good Aero effect and I'm happy with it, even though there are flaws. Hopefully someone could analysis how Microsoft…

These shaders are *.bin resources embedded in dwmcore.dll.

This tool can extract https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/resources_extract.html Then, cmd_decompiler.exe from there https://github.com/bo3b/3Dmigoto can either disassemble or decompile these binaries.

The pixel shaders there include both ps_4_0 code for new GPUs, and ps_2_0 for running on DirectX 9 GPUs. This makes the disassembler slightly more useful than the decompiler, the *.asm will contain both programs.

They first sample from 4 locations of the source texture. The sample locations are computed by vertex shaders somehow, and passed in TEXCOORD1 and TEXCOORD2 input registers. 2D sampler needs 2 floats for UV on input, texture coordinate vectors have up to 4 components on GPUs, so they’re packing 4 2D vectors into two 4D ones, and using xy and zw slices of these vectors. Because they probably using bilinear sampling (these are setup by CPU-running code, I have not looked), these 4 sample instructions are actually reading from 16 texels of the source texture.

Then, they compute the average of the 4 colors.

At this stage, they’re using pre-multiplied alpha.

For the next step of the pixel shader, they compare alpha with zero. If not zero, they convert the color to straight alpha, apply this formula https://entropymine.com/imageworsener/srgbformula/ to convert from sRGB to linear, then convert back to pre-multiplied alpha.

For the last step, they’re applying linear transformation to the color using input values passed in the constant buffer. This part varies a lot for different shaders. Some shaders only using a single scalar constant, and returning (alpha.wwww*result)^2 color. Other shaders are using 4x5 transformation matrix in the constant buffer to transform the final color.

P.S. There’re 282 compiled pixel shaders there, and I only looked at a few of them. It’s very possible some other ones are doing something completely different. I think Microsoft compiled them from just a few source *.hlsl files, with different preprocessor macros. At least that’s how I would do that if I were implementing these effects.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#86
post #5

Ha! What a delightful little project. Thanks for sharing. I can think of all kinds of fun stuff you could do with this. Reminds me of that fake windows update prank. We used to put it on people's screen and maximize it if they forgot to lock their pc. https://fakeupdate.net/

Once I took screenshot of colleague's win desktop screen, replaced with current current wallpaper, and hid all the desktop icons and taskbar. He legit got confused why mouse left click isn't working expectedly.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#87
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average user has the same problems, but doesn't realize it is a UI problem or even think that he could be more productive. When he does he probably thinks that he is too stupid to use a computer.

Which is by the way one main point in "The Design of Everyday Things" by Norman, the book being one core pillar of the usability field.

Yes, I read the book which is in part responsible for my previous comment. But it not only that. The older I get the less I am willing to spend energy to interpret the UI I have in front of me: even finding out which is the app I want to use in the wall of blue apps on my phone is wasted time.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#88

What I love about these old designs is how obvious everything is. You just can't miss the button or the tabs. Now after all this skeuomorphic design revolution it's so hard to tell, is it a button, text, link etc. It probably looks better but it is at the cost of extra thinking for the user.

This is such a hacker news comment. Somehow a group of people supposedly good at using computers struggle to work out what a button is while the average user seems to have no problems.

> Somehow a group of people supposedly good at using computers struggle to work out what a button is while the average user seems to have no problems.

I guess you’ve never sat in on a usability research study? Average users have way WAY more issues than you are implying.

Re: A CSS framework to recreate Windows 7 GUI

#90
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are programmers really UI/UX experts, though? If you said a programmer pointing out how stupid programming is shown in film you might have a point but I really don't think many of these people pointing out their perceived flaws in UI/UX are experts. In any thread that mentions UI/UX something like this always comes up where someone is bemoaning current UI/UX and hearkening to the good old days of when UI/UX was good,…

> hearkening to the good old days of when UI/UX was good, which just so happens to coincide with when they really started getting into computing Nah. I started out with Workbench 1.3, which was flat. Because they literally hadn't the colors available to do more. I didn't use them, but Mac and Atari ST were the same. Then came Workbench 2.0, then MUI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_User_Interface ), and I recogn…

Change for the sake of change isn't necessarily a good thing, but rarely is a change in UI/UX objectively bad, which includes the shift from skeuomorphism over to flat design. The article you've linked has been fairly criticized for it essentially removing controls from their methodology by things like using lower contrast buttons for the 'flatter' designs, which is not essential to the design paradigm.

Ultimately, I'm still going to argue that this is a matter of subjectivity and as we age the less accepting we are to change, so those who fully embraced a particular UX paradigm will find it harder and harder to adapt to shifts in UX unless it cycles back to what they're comfortable with (just like fashion).

To quote Abe Simpson,

> "I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!"

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