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Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

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Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#81

Post by retrac »

SebastianKra wrote: post #76
vintagedave wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back then you could test your UI on people that were a completely blank slate, having possible never used a computer before. You could focus on making the best possible UI there is. This is a really great point. Like many others on this thread I miss "old" UI design, and like many posters can explain why. There's been a large transition to hiding UI, not marking interactable UI, and not spacially locating related U…

> And I think that designing such that it can be used only by those who already know how to use it is a failure. Why? Cars aren't a failure because they need to be learnt, neither is reading, 10-finger typing, math, ... We teach these things because they make other tasks more efficient. Similarly, interfaces are converging to a somewhat complex, but actually quite consistent, set of conventions that allows you to acc…

On a general purpose device, I really am a believer that software should teach the user how to use it, or document how to use it. How else would you do it? A manual? Which is done in software these days, anyway. Making as much as possible discoverable in the interface is good design. The more of that which can be done, the less that needs to be learnt explicitly. Maybe not everything can be, but 40 years ago the Mac applied this principle consistently to its interface and it introduced tens of millions of people to computing who were otherwise put off by having to read a manual first.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#82

Post by AlanYx »

Arainach wrote: post #72
rvba wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still dont know how to easily save files on local computer in MS Office without pressing F12.

I don't understand. Ctrl+S gives you a document where the biggest UI element is a box labelled "Choose a location". Clicking on it shows a bunch of locations on my PC (such as my local documents folder) and has a button that says "More Locations". This "More Locations" button takes you to the same Save As dialog that you would get to from clicking on File -> Save As, same as in every program of the last 30 years. In…

Ctrl+S only does that if a document is unsaved, and it still doesn't actually take you to the save dialog. It takes you to what Microsoft calls the "Save As menu", which takes up the whole window, causing the document content to be obscured, and requires a mouse click after that to get to the actual Save As dialog.

For mouse users, getting to the Save As dialog is actually three clicks in recent versions of Word. F12 is just so much more convenient.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#83

Post by drbawb »

layer8 wrote: post #67
LarryDarrell wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my theories is that organizationally and culturally they are still mourning the loss of the Windows Phone.

Microsoft tries to compete with Apple’s integrated hardware-software experience with their Surface line, but in the context of general wide-spread Windows usage, that’s really more like vanity hardware. As long as Microsoft hardware, along with the marketing, remains touch-focused, they can hardly change their UI design trajectory. Yet the vision of Windows as a touch-heavy user interface remains a wishful-thinking f…

>Microsoft tries to compete with Apple’s integrated hardware-software experience with their Surface line, but in the context of general wide-spread Windows usage, that’s really more like vanity hardware.

What I fail to understand is how MS apparently missed the part where Apple has clearly delineated OSes for their different hardware. You have iOS, iPad OS, macOS, tvOS, etc. Even the phone and tablet, which are nominally the same man-machine interface, are somewhat differentiated.

Why is MS so hellbent on making Windows a jack of all trades?

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#84

Post by Arainach »

AlanYx wrote: post #82
Arainach wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Ctrl+S gives you a document where the biggest UI element is a box labelled "Choose a location". Clicking on it shows a bunch of locations on my PC (such as my local documents folder) and has a button that says "More Locations". This "More Locations" button takes you to the same Save As dialog that you would get to from clicking on File -> Save As, same as in every program of the last 30 years. In…

Ctrl+S only does that if a document is unsaved, and it still doesn't actually take you to the save dialog. It takes you to what Microsoft calls the "Save As menu", which takes up the whole window, causing the document content to be obscured, and requires a mouse click after that to get to the actual Save As dialog. For mouse users, getting to the Save As dialog is actually three clicks in recent versions of Word. F12…

It's still "File -> Save a Copy" (2 clicks) and I'm on an October build that's as new as it gets externally as far as I know: 2210 Build 16.0.15726.20188.

The overlap of "users still using Microsoft Office" and "users using local storage" declines with each passing day. IT admins don't want data outside their retention policy/access logging/subject to user hardware failure, and anyone who thinks cloud storage is a malicious big tech plot left the Microsoft ecosystem years ago.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#85

Post by bluedino »

warning26 wrote: post #8

I was playing with a Win98 computer the other day, and it is amazing how well most of the UX has held up even now. And it's so fast , especially considering the limitations of the hardware it was running on. Really interesting seeing some of the design process that resulted in it.

It was fast on say, 300mhz and faster hardware, but while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#86

Post by bluedino »

_trampeltier wrote: post #25
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #15

I think windows 95/98 era was the peak of UI discoverability. As a kid, I and my friends could learn and explore how a program worked just by expanding all the menus and opening the various dialogs. Dialogs which were filled with fields and their descriptions! Before then, it was the world of DOS and you had to know what you were doing ahead of time. And now, UIs are dynamic, initially hiding stuff from the user and…

Now every step is full of dark pattern. Just like you wanna save a file in office. If you don't want store it in the cloud, there is always a step more. Also with the free One Drive and store it automaticly somewhere, I helped recently a friend (no computer guy), there are files just everywhere, some in the cloud some there and some somewhere else. Todays Windows is just hostile to non tech people, even to tech peopl…

I'm just amazed at how much crap is crammed onto the title bars and everything these days. Look at the clean interface of Outlook 97-2003 compared to now. They have undo/redo, "customize quick access toolbar", "ribbon display options", your Office Online account, and other crap on the toolbars that used to have the close/minimize/maximize buttons.

I like to think that some PM at Microsoft got promoted and brags about how one of those is 'their' button.

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#87

Post by andai »

Arainach wrote: post #84
AlanYx wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ctrl+S only does that if a document is unsaved, and it still doesn't actually take you to the save dialog. It takes you to what Microsoft calls the "Save As menu", which takes up the whole window, causing the document content to be obscured, and requires a mouse click after that to get to the actual Save As dialog. For mouse users, getting to the Save As dialog is actually three clicks in recent versions of Word. F12…

It's still "File -> Save a Copy" (2 clicks) and I'm on an October build that's as new as it gets externally as far as I know: 2210 Build 16.0.15726.20188. The overlap of "users still using Microsoft Office" and "users using local storage" declines with each passing day. IT admins don't want data outside their retention policy/access logging/subject to user hardware failure, and anyone who thinks cloud storage is a ma…

By "thinks", do you mean "knows"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#88

Post by [deleted] »

AlanYx wrote: post #82
Arainach wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Ctrl+S gives you a document where the biggest UI element is a box labelled "Choose a location". Clicking on it shows a bunch of locations on my PC (such as my local documents folder) and has a button that says "More Locations". This "More Locations" button takes you to the same Save As dialog that you would get to from clicking on File -> Save As, same as in every program of the last 30 years. In…

Ctrl+S only does that if a document is unsaved, and it still doesn't actually take you to the save dialog. It takes you to what Microsoft calls the "Save As menu", which takes up the whole window, causing the document content to be obscured, and requires a mouse click after that to get to the actual Save As dialog. For mouse users, getting to the Save As dialog is actually three clicks in recent versions of Word. F12…

[deleted]

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#89

Post by SebastianKra »

retrac wrote: post #81
SebastianKra wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I think that designing such that it can be used only by those who already know how to use it is a failure. Why? Cars aren't a failure because they need to be learnt, neither is reading, 10-finger typing, math, ... We teach these things because they make other tasks more efficient. Similarly, interfaces are converging to a somewhat complex, but actually quite consistent, set of conventions that allows you to acc…

On a general purpose device, I really am a believer that software should teach the user how to use it, or document how to use it. How else would you do it? A manual? Which is done in software these days, anyway. Making as much as possible discoverable in the interface is good design. The more of that which can be done, the less that needs to be learnt explicitly. Maybe not everything can be, but 40 years ago the Mac…

> How else would you [learn to use it]?

Randomly tapping elements on the screen and seeing what happens is a perfectly acceptable learning strategy for a child.

From there, you might learn that an accent color can represent links; That a row of buttons, where one is emphasised, might be a tab-bar; That holding on an element will open a secondary menu; That little arrows represent folded content; that a list on the left might change content on the right; That certain icons always lead to similar functionality;

Side note: OP's neice was wildly tapping the screen, because she likely learned that nowadays nearly everything is interactive (Go on YouTube and find me one element that can't be tapped).

Re: Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

#90

Post by dfxm12 »

rvba wrote: post #57
_trampeltier wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now every step is full of dark pattern. Just like you wanna save a file in office. If you don't want store it in the cloud, there is always a step more. Also with the free One Drive and store it automaticly somewhere, I helped recently a friend (no computer guy), there are files just everywhere, some in the cloud some there and some somewhere else. Todays Windows is just hostile to non tech people, even to tech peopl…

I still dont know how to easily save files on local computer in MS Office without pressing F12.

Pressing one button seems pretty easy to me. You used to have to press the ctrl+shift+S chord.

Alternatively, you could mouse over and click file -> save as or press Alt -> f -> a.

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