[izacus]

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.

[InCityDreams]

One man's rockstar developer is another man's script kiddie.

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

[haspok]

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.)

[pjc50]

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.

[izacus]

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.