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Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the re

Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the requirement of bespoke 'dark mode's? Why has the GUI so dramatically regressed from 1995?

ashtonbaker 7y ago
Because Apple realized that the visual appearance of the OSX desktop is an aspect of their brand, and every person working on a MacBook in a coffee shop is a public billboard which needs to adhere to brand standards.
- Razengan 7y ago
  Windows has similar restrictions.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    How so? I've been a windows developer for over a decade and I'm not aware of any.
  - 1MachineElf 7y ago
    They do now, but it wasn't always like that. WindowBlinds[0] on Windows XP was extremely customizable. I remember the top community themes were usually dark and minimalist ones. [0] https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/
simias 7y ago
>Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the requirement of bespoke 'dark mode's? I certainly don't. Do you have a specific OS in mind? In my experience it worked as long as you only used applications that used the stock UI toolkit without customization. As soon as some app tries to use custom controls (or even just custom icons) it becomes messy, either because these controls won't apply the custom system theme and they'll stand out like a sore thumb or because they'll apply partially and make the control hard or impossible to see correctly. On Linux it's even worse because of the multiple UI toolkits/desktop environment available (GTK-gnome/Qt-kde/motif/wxwidgets/...) which often need to be configured independently from one another. And on top of that some applications like gvim, emacs, firefox or terminal emulators will have their own custom theme configuration that will override the global theme. I definitely understand why Apple thought it was a good idea to lock things up to give the user a consistent experience.
- majewsky 7y ago
  Circa 2008 I used KDE 4 with a dark UI theme (one of the predefined color schemes) and it worked perfectly in 99% of applications. Sure you have a few oddballs (cough Java cough), but all Qt-based or GTK-based apps adopted the colorscheme without any issues.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Custom colors worked in the vast majority of the post-95 Windows apps I ever used. Some of them did custom theming that ignored system colors, but a lot of those had swappable themes so you could just get a custom theme that was dark. GTK and QT all typically obeyed Windows system colors when I used apps built with those. I don't know for certain that the JVM's UI toolkits obeyed them, but I'm pretty sure they did. The Windows "high contrast" accessibility mode relied on system colors so you would expect them to work. The modern hell era of 'every UI element is a png file' is specifically the fault of Apple who caused it (with iOS's gaudy visual style that could not be efficiently rasterized using vector graphics by the average developer) and reinforced it with the way they handled the introduction of Retina displays (adding specific tooling to support tons of massive resolution-specific pngs that developers then shipped in their apps) System colors were very easy to tap into using VB6, Delphi, VB.Net, C#, etc. If people weren't obeying system colors they just didn't care about obeying user intent or about helping people with visual impairment.
- 1MachineElf 7y ago
  I had a great experience back on Windows XP & Vista using WindowBlinds[0][1] to give the entire system a dark, minimalist theme. There are examples[1][2][3] of 3rd party apps working well with the system-wide theme. [0] https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds
- ChrisRR 7y ago
  I'm fairly sure you could change every colour you wanted in Windows 95/98
- basscomm 7y ago
api 7y ago
> Why has the GUI so dramatically regressed from 1995? (1) Mobile caused a generation to at least temporarily sideline all interest in desktop UIs to focus on phones, causing desktop UI to reach near-abandonware status. This seems to be changing now that it's clear that the mobile phone as currently implemented is not going to replace or grow to encompass desktop's role in computing. (2) There has been an explosion of desktop UI libraries and rendering engines with the web rendering engine (Electron and similar) being the most popular. All these different engines have their own notions of styling and color defaults and theming, causing unification of the desktop to break down. This is largely the fault of desktop OS vendors for failing to offer a unified platform or keep their platforms up to date, forcing people to seek alternatives.
pwinnski 7y ago
Yes, what a nightmare that was! The triumph of Facebook over MySpace has been attributed, repeatedly, to the customizability of MySpace, and how relatively unpleasant the result of that was. I would say the same is true of customizing Windows. Me, I love being able to switch from Solarized to Solarized Dark to keep track of which window is which app, and I think Apple could provide slightly more customization than they do, but if the choice is between Windows 3 and no-dark-mode-just-a-tiny-accent-color, I'll take the latter every time.

ashtonbaker 7y ago

Because Apple realized that the visual appearance of the OSX desktop is an aspect of their brand, and every person working on a MacBook in a coffee shop is a public billboard which needs to adhere to brand standards.

Razengan 7y ago
Windows has similar restrictions.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  How so? I've been a windows developer for over a decade and I'm not aware of any.
- 1MachineElf 7y ago
  They do now, but it wasn't always like that. WindowBlinds[0] on Windows XP was extremely customizable. I remember the top community themes were usually dark and minimalist ones. [0] https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/

simias 7y ago

>Hey guys, remember when you could just arbitrarily change the colors of UI elements across your entire OS and pretty much all of its applications without the requirement of bespoke 'dark mode's? I certainly don't. Do you have a specific OS in mind? In my experience it worked as long as you only used applications that used the stock UI toolkit without customization. As soon as some app tries to use custom controls (or even just custom icons) it becomes messy, either because these controls won't apply the custom system theme and they'll stand out like a sore thumb or because they'll apply partially and make the control hard or impossible to see correctly. On Linux it's even worse because of the multiple UI toolkits/desktop environment available (GTK-gnome/Qt-kde/motif/wxwidgets/...) which often need to be configured independently from one another. And on top of that some applications like gvim, emacs, firefox or terminal emulators will have their own custom theme configuration that will override the global theme. I definitely understand why Apple thought it was a good idea to lock things up to give the user a consistent experience.

majewsky 7y ago
Circa 2008 I used KDE 4 with a dark UI theme (one of the predefined color schemes) and it worked perfectly in 99% of applications. Sure you have a few oddballs (cough Java cough), but all Qt-based or GTK-based apps adopted the colorscheme without any issues.
kevingadd 7y ago
Custom colors worked in the vast majority of the post-95 Windows apps I ever used. Some of them did custom theming that ignored system colors, but a lot of those had swappable themes so you could just get a custom theme that was dark. GTK and QT all typically obeyed Windows system colors when I used apps built with those. I don't know for certain that the JVM's UI toolkits obeyed them, but I'm pretty sure they did. The Windows "high contrast" accessibility mode relied on system colors so you would expect them to work. The modern hell era of 'every UI element is a png file' is specifically the fault of Apple who caused it (with iOS's gaudy visual style that could not be efficiently rasterized using vector graphics by the average developer) and reinforced it with the way they handled the introduction of Retina displays (adding specific tooling to support tons of massive resolution-specific pngs that developers then shipped in their apps) System colors were very easy to tap into using VB6, Delphi, VB.Net, C#, etc. If people weren't obeying system colors they just didn't care about obeying user intent or about helping people with visual impairment.
1MachineElf 7y ago
I had a great experience back on Windows XP & Vista using WindowBlinds[0][1] to give the entire system a dark, minimalist theme. There are examples[1][2][3] of 3rd party apps working well with the system-wide theme. [0] https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ https://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/wb5/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds
ChrisRR 7y ago
I'm fairly sure you could change every colour you wanted in Windows 95/98
basscomm 7y ago

api 7y ago

> Why has the GUI so dramatically regressed from 1995? (1) Mobile caused a generation to at least temporarily sideline all interest in desktop UIs to focus on phones, causing desktop UI to reach near-abandonware status. This seems to be changing now that it's clear that the mobile phone as currently implemented is not going to replace or grow to encompass desktop's role in computing. (2) There has been an explosion of desktop UI libraries and rendering engines with the web rendering engine (Electron and similar) being the most popular. All these different engines have their own notions of styling and color defaults and theming, causing unification of the desktop to break down. This is largely the fault of desktop OS vendors for failing to offer a unified platform or keep their platforms up to date, forcing people to seek alternatives.

pwinnski 7y ago

Yes, what a nightmare that was! The triumph of Facebook over MySpace has been attributed, repeatedly, to the customizability of MySpace, and how relatively unpleasant the result of that was. I would say the same is true of customizing Windows. Me, I love being able to switch from Solarized to Solarized Dark to keep track of which window is which app, and I think Apple could provide slightly more customization than they do, but if the choice is between Windows 3 and no-dark-mode-just-a-tiny-accent-color, I'll take the latter every time.