4 ms·
Windows NT/9x/2000 represented the high point for aesthetics. Light grey, rectilinear, clear delineation, all contributed to being easy on the eye and function
by leg100 5y ago
Windows NT/9x/2000 represented the high point for aesthetics.
Light grey, rectilinear, clear delineation, all contributed to being easy on the eye and functional.
Glad to see it make a comeback.
- MetaWhirledPeas 5y agoThat style is a bit too brutalist for my tastes. I prefer a splash of color, like with BeOS or something like that.
- slver 5y agoWindows did have color accents, like the dark blue selection, it's just a bit muted and stale by modern standards. It's a good idea to keep the chrome be chrome-like so color can be reserved for meaningful elements (like red for warning, green for safe, blue for selection etc.). Notice that although end-user apps are all colorful and fancy these days, that most pro apps have remained very conservative, erring to light or dark gray and using color semantically only (think photoshop, 3dsmax, autocad etc.). This tells us something.
- Aeolun 5y agoExcept programming apps and IDE’s?
- nine_k 5y agoThese use color syntactically.
- tompazourek 5y agoNot just syntactically, e.g. the default Visual Studio theme is all blue (menus, buttons, etc.)
- slver 5y agoMost IDEs are gray. Microsoft is trying to be quirky, same with Office, and I don’t know how well it’s working.
- jagger27 5y agoCheck out the included themes! There are throwback themes for various 90s operating systems.
- johnwyles 5y agoYa'll remember Enlightenment? That was my jam.
- einpoklum 5y agoI also like those a lot, especially, Windows 2000, but the thing is that their aesthetic is also tied up in my memory with the period in my life when I was exposed to that interface, things I went through, hopes and aspirations and challenges and feelings... people didn't live through the 1990s or early 2000s don't have any of that emotional overlay; it's just another UI style for them.
- zem 5y agoi think it was specifically win2k that got it right. the 9x series still felt a bit clunky, even at the time.
- auxym 5y agoRebooting everytime you changed a setting in 9X got annoying pretty fast. Win2k brought the NT kernel to the masses, which was a huge improvement. True multi-user support, for starters.
- DonHopkins 5y agoConfiguring the Windows desktop to look like Windows NT makes me feel 20 years younger!
- andai 5y agoCan it still be done? I thought the Classic theme was removed in Windows 8 (and remains absent in 10).
- CRConrad 5y agoThere are whole replacement shells available to try and restore the classic look (called WindowBlinds or Stardock something, I think). But no, alas, the old UI seems to have been permanently deleted from Microsoft's own repertoire; at least I can't find it.
- wsc981 5y ago> Windows NT/9x/2000 represented the high point for aesthetics. I never liked Windows NT aesthetics-wise. Personally I find the Windows Explorer ugly and I don't like the Start menu either. I was hoping Serenity looked a bit more like Macintosh System 7 [0], NeXTStep [1] or BeOS [2]. So I was kinda disappointed when I visited the site. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7 [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
- grishka 5y agoAnd also compact! Most modern desktop UIs are ruined by the existence of touchscreen laptops.
- aledalgrande 5y agoWin2k was my last Windows, and still the best I've seen.
- CRConrad 5y agoXP and especially Vista looked sillier, with the constant need to update the UI to entice users to upgrade, but I think they did actually improve technically, "under the hood". And by the time we got the best Windows ever -- i.e, Windows 7 -- I couldn't even tell you what that looked like natively[1], because by then I was in the habit of installing Powertoys and using its TweakUI component to switch to a W2K theme[2] the first thing I did with any new Windows installation I got. Versions 8 and 10 may be even better, engineering-wise -- 10 certainly crashes or hangs even less frequently than 7 -- but since they won't let you you fix the crappy GUI any more, their usability suffers much more than the increased stability can compensate for. ___ [1]: Pretty much like Vista, with that super-annoying "Glass"(?) transparency bumf as default... I think. [2]: This, too, was whittled down over time. In XP, and I think in Vista too, you could set window border width to any value down to and including 0 in TweakUI. By W7, you needed to edit a Registry value to get this below 1.
- dmytrish 5y agoI really enjoyed the previous, more Macintosh-like Serenity design with the global menu. I had genuinely freaked out when I rebuilt the system just after Andreas moved it to be more Windows-like: I ran Serenity browser and in the first moment it looked eerily like an old-school Internet Explorer.
- hutzlibu 5y ago"Windows NT/9x/2000 represented the high point for aesthetics." I hope you are aware, that this is highly subjective? (and maybe nostalgia related?) Because I don't know any person who likes it, who didn't use it back then a lot. edit: unsurprisingly notaware it seems. I advice to make a test : ask any person who did not use this aesthetic back then, and see if you find anyone who likes it otherwise each to his own
- MarkusWandel 5y agoIt never went away. On Linux you can use the "Mate" desktop environment, which is the 1990s windowing paradigm updated just enough to be fully modern. Windows until recently could be reskinned to look like Win2K, though I doubt that Windows 10 still can.