[wolvoleo]

It was pretty groundbreaking tbh. Many of the UI paradigms are still used today. Windows 95 introduced the start menu and the task bar, windows 3.11 didn't have them in that form. The start menu was just an applications folder (a bit like on Mac) and the task bar was some shortcuts on what was basically the desktop. I don't think windows 3 had a registry either. It really became what we still know as windows today.

Of course the architecture sucked deeply with its dos based heritage but they fixed that soon after when NT 4 came out. And 2000 made that a stable experience.

I remember it was a pretty exciting time. I was studying computer science and we tried early beta builds ("Chicago") that had leaked.

[Gravityloss]

For working with data, I certainly like lists and trees with automated layout and dislike 2d space with human drag-and-drop layouts.

I assume most people are like this, and the start menu was a huge improvement. Most people would have been lost if it was just windows and icons freely floating in a 2d space.

[lproven]

> Many of the UI paradigms are still used today.

True.

> Windows 95 introduced the start menu and the task bar,

True.

> windows 3.11 didn't have them in that form.

It didn't have them in _any_ form. It had the Program Manager and the File Manager, inherited from OS/2 1.1.

> The start menu was just an applications folder

No, it wasn't.

> (a bit like on Mac)

Again no. Not at all.

The Start menu is a hierarchical browser showing a tree constructed on-the-fly from the storage on disk. That storage is just a folder, yes, but it's a folder containing shortcuts and folders. It does not contain anything else: no binaries, no programs, no config. Just directories full of shortcuts.

(For hardcore Unix folks: "shortcuts" are Windows >= 95's version of symlinks, with more and richer metadata, but they are filer-GUI-level only and are not understood by the shell, because the shell predates them by a decade or more.)

> and the task bar was some shortcuts on what was basically the desktop.

Nope, not at all. It's a rich UI in its own right with half a dozen separate interacting components: in Win95, it contained the start menu, then a window switcher, then a notification area containing sub-controls (as separate applets) and the clock.

It is more complex and sophisticated than the only 2 limited bits of prior art: the icon bar in Acorn's RISC OS, and the Dock in NeXTstep, which was influenced by RISC OS.

> I don't think windows 3 had a registry either.

It did, but all it stored were file associations: the 3 letter extensions on the end of filenames, and what app opened what file extension.

> It really became what we still know as windows today.

True.