<- Back
Comments (85)
- linguaeSteve 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 4/98/2000, Office 97, and Visual Basic 6. I even liked Internet Explorer 5. These were well-made products when it came to the user interface. Yes, Windows 95 crashed a lot, but so did Macintosh System 7.Things started going downhill, in my opinion, with the Windows XP "Fisher-Price" Luna interface and the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon.
- VerifiedReportsLook how crisp, professional, and usable it all is.This is a very good write-up. There's no way this level of testing and dedication could have resulted in the execrable shitshow that is Windows today.Mac OS is going backward with accelerating speed, too. They had just started to recover from Jony Ive when they put a packaging designer in charge of UI... resulting in the "Liquid Glass" debacle, and all the other incompetent UI changes that accompanied Tahoe's rollout.
- lateforworkDesigners 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 window corners? Don't hold your breath.
- WalterBrightAny user interface designer should take a good look at the controls on a commercial airliner. An awful lot of effort goes into making an intuitive, effective user interface. I have disagreements with it, but there's no denying it's very well done.Designing a programming language is mostly about usability. I'll be giving a talk about that in April at Yale. It's a fun topic!
- catskullMicrosoft dumped $100 million on this huge marketing campaign with a simple question: “Where do you want to go today?”I love it. It really captures the seemingly endless new digital world that was emerging in the 90’s and in many ways is still evolving 30 years later.I love the promo video they made too: https://youtu.be/KNLDLVJZx0oI love it so much I wrote a blog post inspired by it: https://catskull.net/where-do-you-want-to-go-today.htmlWhere do you want to go today?
- coldfingerrComdex 1996 DELL (or some company) exposed Windows 95 pcs for the public to mess with. Having used only 3.11 before, I was fascinated with the desktop and also felt it very strange that the contents of the UI were so minimal.Of course I didnt discover anything else: I was afraid of clicking "Start", because I dindt know what that was that going to start, and the computer wasnt mine to brick.
- leonidasvPast discussion:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12330899
- khazhouxThis part stands out to me:> The Windows 95 user interface design team was formed in October, 1992... The number of people oscillated during the project but was approximately twelve. The software developers dedicated to implementing the user interface accounted for another twelve or so peopleI still don't understand what happened starting around 2010-ish (from my observations at the time) that we went from being able to handle a company's worth of software with 30 people, to needing 30 people for every individual project. Startups with minor products had team-pages with 15 people.
- hnthrowaway0315I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI in everything I used in my 30+ years of tech life.I sincerely hope that one day we could go back to that road. If you want that achieved, please support me to join Apple/Microsoft to become the UI boss, fire all flat-design people and hire a small team to implement the older UI, then give a few passionate talks on EDX and conferences so people who supported flat UI magically support the older UI. They always follow whoever the lead is like headless flies.LOL.
- ginkoNotice how they moved the ok & cancel buttons to the bottom right since it’s the more logical location to put them.Meanwhile gtk now puts those on opposite sides of the window title bar by default.
- rr808Wasn't Windows 95 just a copy of Windows NT, which was the real product.
- kgwxdEverything since this style of design feels like a cartoon version, with ridiculous non-sense that only gets in the way.
- casey2Usability is the wrong metric, paint by numbers is more "usable" (sic accessible) than a canvas but you'd be depressed watching your son graduate art school and that's all he can do.If you do want to optimize for usability you have to make sure you aren't making the system more consumptive at the same time. The prime example from the article is trading a moment where the user must take initiative with a menu. More useable less useful. Lower the floor not the ceiling etc. Windows (and iOS) did make genuine improvements to OSs but because of decisions like these most users are locked out of enjoying them.