[Izkata]

> Think putting wood PNGs as backgrounds for app elements or adding brushed aluminium textures on sliders, things like those look pretty dated to me now.

This was a late 90s/early 2000s thing. I remember it on some Win98 and XP applications.

[tavavex]

Nah, it persisted in many places, in some to lesser extents than others. It feels like in the 90s it was more of a "look, we can make UIs so flashy now!" thing, which then morphed into an actual design philosophy. See for example the Apple Newsstand app from iOS 6 [0] or lots of VST plugins from any time period, even up to today [1]

[0] https://i.redd.it/9fhcm9ce0ao21.jpg

[1] https://klanghelm.com/assets/img/VUMT/VUMT-2-solo-full.jpg