4 ms·
I think to a certain extent we already had Movie OS in the early 00s / late 90s when all kinds of apps were skinned. People would make all kinds of baroque skin
by andrewvc 17y ago
I think to a certain extent we already had Movie OS in the early 00s / late 90s when all kinds of apps were skinned. People would make all kinds of baroque skins that looked like they came out of movies, that acted much like this, but you know what? They were cluttered and hard to use.
Who remembers Winamp 3, with its fancy skins[1]. I know I breathed a sigh of relief when iTunes with its simple, yet highly functional, interface came out.
1. As an example: http://www.thg.ru/technews/images/winamp_skin-270206.jpg http://www.thg.ru/technews/images/winamp_skin-270206.jpg
- danhon 17y agoThis misses the point. Skinning - in the Winamp model of 'same functionality but different look' - is not the same as effective visual storytelling and usage of animation. I'm not talking about just how Movie OS looks, but how it behaves as a whole. I agree that sticking a Star Trek skin on Windows 98 reduces usability.
- andrewvc 17y agoWell, then why do all the examples in the article look like those horrible skinned apps? I have a feeling that what the author proposes leads us down the road of pretty but ridiculous interfaces.
- pavel_lishin 17y agoDo you remember Winamp 2? When people tried to make "fancy skins", and failed even more miserably? And iTunes is highly functional? Since when?
- k33n 17y agoDoes anyone remember Neoplanet? The skinnable browser?
- benkant 17y agoVaguely. It was around in about '99 or 2000? If I remember correctly it was the IE COM (Webview was it?) object embedded in an app? Also I remember it being pretty useless outside of looking nice. In retrospect it probably didn't even look that nice, I can't recall.
- k33n 17y agoYep. It was just a straight up IE view embedded in skinned chrome. When it booted up there was this nice voice that would say "Neoplanet... Online".