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The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

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Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#91

Post by cosmic_cheese »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #81
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember it lost the ability to render rounded window corners, because while Windows 8 msstyle themes existed they all had the hideous boxed corners that clashed hard with many looks. I don’t agree that transparency is always a detractor. Judicious use can be a net positive, but it doesn’t work for all themes and there should be an option to turn it off. Personally I didn’t find the W7 variation of Aero t…

> From what I remember it lost the ability to render rounded window corners, ...I'm guessing you haven't used Windows 11? -------- By "rounded corners" are you referring to rounded-off corners in the nonclient area (such that the hWnd's rect is not clipped at all)? If so, then no: those would be rendered using a 9-grid[1] and have always been supported. If you're referring to how so many fan/community-made msstyles f…

I’m speaking specially about Windows 8/8.1. Obviously 11 and the new Fluent design language it brought don’t suffer the same issue.

Whatever the case, rounded corners on the titlebars and window chrome were common in XP/Vista/7 custom msstyles but were nowhere to be seen for 8/8.1 custom msstyles. It was one of the most frustrating aspects of that era of Windows for me.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#92

Post by jedberg »

If you want a true lesson on design, check out Ask Tog, starting here:

https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/

Tog was the original design engineer for the Mac, and arguably one of the first true HCI engineers.

Then read the rest of his website. He goes into where Windows tried to copy Mac and got it horribly wrong.

One of my favorite examples is menu placement. The reason the Mac menus are at the top is because the edges of the screen provide an infinite click target in one direction. So you just go to the top to find what you want. With Windows, the menu was at the top of each Window, making a tiny click target. Then when you maximized the window, the menu was at the top, but with a few pixels of unclickable border. So it looked like the Mac but was infinitely worse.

If you're making a UI, you should read all of Tog's writings.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#93

Post by Paddyz »

rkagerer wrote: post #53
okanat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon Ribbon also has a similar research behind it, just like Windows 95. For what they designed it, allowing beginners to discover all the functionality that's available, it works perfectly. I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. I also like it since it is very tastefully ma…

The Ribbon is a disaster. Compared to conventional toolbars, it fails across several metrics. When it first came out, I did studies of myself using it vs. the older toolbared versions of Word and Excel, and found I was quantifiably slower. This was after spending enough time to familiarize myself with it and get over any learning curve. EFFICIENCY The biggest problem is it introduced more clicks to get things done -…

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Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#94

Post by bediger4000 »

okanat wrote: post #25
linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon Ribbon also has a similar research behind it, just like Windows 95. For what they designed it, allowing beginners to discover all the functionality that's available, it works perfectly. I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. I also like it since it is very tastefully ma…

allowing beginners to discover all the functionality

How many beginners were there in 2007? Hardly any, PC and "Word" penetration was pretty close to 100%. We are still stuck with "beginners have to figure this out" interfaces in 2026.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#95

Post by Paddyz »

titzer wrote: post #27
lateforwork wrote: post #5

Designers tend to be less open to feedback than developers. That, I think, helps explain why flat UI persists even though it has shown usability drawbacks. It also helps explain why overall usability feels like it's declining ever year — for instance, macOS Tahoe seems noticeably worse in usability compared to macOS Sequoia. Does anyone think Apple is going to rush out a release that fixes the excessive rounding of w…

It's all just rearranging deck chairs at this point. I feel like UX designers don't realize that their job should have a natural tailing off as we discover and lock in the good ideas and discard the bad. Even if the ideas aren't that great, users can at least get good at however it does work, if it stays constant. Instead, we just get more dice rolls, eyecandy, and frustration. I for one hate the power dynamic that O…

[dead]

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#96

Post by bediger4000 »

jedberg wrote: post #92

If you want a true lesson on design, check out Ask Tog, starting here: https://asktog.com/atc/principles-of-interaction-design/ Tog was the original design engineer for the Mac, and arguably one of the first true HCI engineers. Then read the rest of his website. He goes into where Windows tried to copy Mac and got it horribly wrong. One of my favorite examples is menu placement. The reason the Mac menus are at the to…

You can generalize this observation to a lot of Microsoft's decisions: a problem exists, so they solve it in a nifty way, a way that makes everything else harder or more error prone. An example: byte order mark. That sure does solve the problem of UTF-16 and UTF-32 byte order determination. It makes every other use of what should be a stream of bytes or words much harder. Concatenate two files? Gotta check for the BOM on both files. Now every app has to look at the first bytes of every "text" file it opens to decide what to do. Suddenly, "text" files have become interpreted, and thus open to allowing security vulnerabilities.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#97

Post by agumonkey »

derefr wrote: post #36
okanat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon Ribbon also has a similar research behind it, just like Windows 95. For what they designed it, allowing beginners to discover all the functionality that's available, it works perfectly. I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. I also like it since it is very tastefully ma…

> I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. Well, yes, but that observation doesn't prove the point you think it does. People who were highly experienced with previous non-ribbon versions of Office, disliked the ribbon, because the ribbon is essentially a "tutorial mode" for Office. The ribbon reduces c…

I forgot the early release but ribbon seemed to have fuller keyboard shortcut and could be hidden entirely. Leaving power users with more space and faster command triggers isn't it ?

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#98

Post by cosmic_cheese »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #46
linguae wrote: post #15

Steve Jobs is famous for his 1996 quote about Microsoft not having taste ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiOzGI4MqSU ). I disagree; as much as I love the classic Mac OS and Jobs-era Mac OS X, and despite my feelings about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, 1995-2000 Microsoft's user interfaces were quite tasteful, in my opinion, and this was Microsoft's most tasteful period. I have fond memories of Windows 95/NT 4/…

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every ma…

I liked the gentle amber sleep mode breathing power button on my circa-2000 CRT iMac. It wasn’t nearly as bright as that of later models and was quite nice.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#99

Post by quacked »

tombert wrote: post #74
okanat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon Ribbon also has a similar research behind it, just like Windows 95. For what they designed it, allowing beginners to discover all the functionality that's available, it works perfectly. I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. I also like it since it is very tastefully ma…

The thing that bothers me more than ribbon itself is how much the performance started degrading once they introduced it. I got MS Office 97 working in Wine recently, and it's still shockingly capable. There are lots of formatting options, it can read my system TTF fonts, and it's since it's nearly thirty-year-old software, it runs ridiculously fast on modern computers. I don't feel like MS has added many more feature…

Forget modern computers. I booted up my dad's COMPAQ from 1998, running Windows 2000, and was blown away by the speed and logical layout of the applications. I have to grit my teeth using W11 File Explorer because of what I recently re-experienced.

Re: The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)

#100

Post by Sophira »

tombert wrote: post #74
okanat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon Ribbon also has a similar research behind it, just like Windows 95. For what they designed it, allowing beginners to discover all the functionality that's available, it works perfectly. I think most of the complaints from the tech circles are completely unfounded in reality. Many non-tech people and younger ones actually prefer using Ribbon. I also like it since it is very tastefully ma…

The thing that bothers me more than ribbon itself is how much the performance started degrading once they introduced it. I got MS Office 97 working in Wine recently, and it's still shockingly capable. There are lots of formatting options, it can read my system TTF fonts, and it's since it's nearly thirty-year-old software, it runs ridiculously fast on modern computers. I don't feel like MS has added many more feature…

I imagine Office 365 is to Office 97 as FIFA 23 is to FIFA 97, in that it's still essentially the same idea and can never be otherwise, but the later versions are designed to draw new people in.
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