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by blackhaz 1096 days ago
Really miss Windows 3.1, 95 and 98 era. Interfaces have only gone worse since then. Every time I crank up my 386 or Pentium I am completely blown away by how clean and stress-free the GUI was. Really tired of this Apple/Google low-contrast pop-up hell.
2 comments
scrlk 1095 days ago
The Windows Interface Guidelines from 1995 is an interesting read: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/M...
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achr2 1095 days ago
This is an amazing reference, thanks.
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izacus 1095 days ago
Remember how you could actually RESIZE things in that era? Sidebars, toolbars, etc.?

Now half of my UIs have "Tap to...." labels when localized. So many amazing modern UI tools and the rockstar developers wielding them can't even make a draggable sidebar.

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InCityDreams 1095 days ago
One man's rockstar developer is another man's script kiddie.

I do, however have considerably more time for script kiddies.

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haspok 1095 days ago
Good luck resizing a typical modal window though. Also good luck with high-DPI...

Even resizing regular windows was not always an option, and if it was, it was very rarely thought through by the developers. I vividly remember that the Swing framework for Java was very special just because of this, as in you couldn't really specify it in pixels where your components would be placed, you'd have all sorts of strategies to divide and position them. (Not saying it was any good, but certainly a notable effort.)

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pjc50 1094 days ago
This was grey-downvoted, but it's correct: Win16/32 MessageBox() modals are not resizeable.

Not only that, but window resizing was something that had to be implemented for each window, so lots of applications had unresizeable dialogs and only the "document" area was resizeable.

Even worse, the use of pixel positioning meant that nothing was scaleable. High-DPI display? Choose (a) not being able to read anything or (b) bad linear rescale by a limited number of scales.

I too am a fan of the simplicity and clarity of the old Windows UI, and Microsoft haven't really managed to improve on it, but let's not pretend it doesn't have serious limitations.

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izacus 1094 days ago
Why do you people think that nerdsplaining a few corner cases somehow refutes a change in general situation?

Yes, I remember modals not being resizable, I was there. That was not the point.

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