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Man, the HN crowd is tough. Folks here don't seem to like anything other than Win95 UI. I personally found the UI to be very slick and pretty. It seems very si

Man, the HN crowd is tough. Folks here don't seem to like anything other than Win95 UI. I personally found the UI to be very slick and pretty. It seems very similar to Win11 and looks rather pretty. Would love to give it a try.

jcelerier 5y ago
The Win95 UI was the result of pretty thorough formal-ish user studies. How many design iterations after that went through the same process ? Fairly close to 0 I believe.
- webmaven 5y ago
  Microsoft did a lot of usability research on Vista: https://news.microsoft.com/2007/01/29/large-scale-research-project-aims-to-make-windows-vista-useful-fun-for-all/ https://news.microsoft.com/2007/01/29/large-scale-research-p...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
the_other 5y ago
Not this reader. I thought W95 looked clunky in ‘95 and hasn’t aged well. I much prefer the “open-ness” imparted by macOS’s border-free designs. It’s not perfect, and the “low colour, transparency in meaningless places” direction its taking isn’t its best look. It was better when it felt more “fun”. I yearn for someone to take the pre-lion design goals and take them deeper i to more usable and more inviting directions.
hulitu 5y ago
> It seems very similar to Win11 and looks rather pretty. This sentence contradicts itself. Some people say that there is a certain beauty in ugliness, but i don't think it applies to windows 10 and 11.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
Seems like around Windows 95 was the last time designers put a thought to designing for usability and around the actual constraints in the medium. Most modern UIs seem to focus almost entirely on clean aesthetics, usually mindlessly drawing on conventions that serve limitations that exist in mobile, such as being really conservative about using screen space. I think desktop Firefox is an excellent example of this. A lot of very useful features are hidden behind an additional click on a minuscule ≡-button (What does that symbol even mean? Why doesn't it have a label?) All, it appears, to save hundreds pixels of screen space, while desktop displays are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You can't even use full screen windows on many desktop displays, you'll get neck pain from literally having to turn your head to read.
- projektfu 5y ago
  Worth mentioning that you can turn the pull down menus back on in Firefox.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    Right, but my point is this: What is the point in saving some sub 1% of screen space from a screen that is typically too big to even be fully utilized? Why are all the buttons tiny and hard to click, why do they have hieroglyphic symbols with no labels? A button for opening an ad for a third party app (Pocket) is important enough to be immediately accessible. Why aren't my bookmarks deemed as important? Makes a lot of sense on a mobile device where screen space is very limited. But on desktop?
- prmoustache 5y ago
  How many times do you really use that ≡ "burger" menu button of firefox in a day really? And after how many times do you end up having learned the keyboard shortcuts? There are only a handful of them that don't have a keyboard shortcut.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    Is there a keyboard shortcut for the ≡ menu? How do I open the bookmarks bar?

jcelerier 5y ago

The Win95 UI was the result of pretty thorough formal-ish user studies. How many design iterations after that went through the same process ? Fairly close to 0 I believe.

webmaven 5y ago
Microsoft did a lot of usability research on Vista: https://news.microsoft.com/2007/01/29/large-scale-research-project-aims-to-make-windows-vista-useful-fun-for-all/ https://news.microsoft.com/2007/01/29/large-scale-research-p...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

the_other 5y ago

Not this reader. I thought W95 looked clunky in ‘95 and hasn’t aged well. I much prefer the “open-ness” imparted by macOS’s border-free designs. It’s not perfect, and the “low colour, transparency in meaningless places” direction its taking isn’t its best look. It was better when it felt more “fun”. I yearn for someone to take the pre-lion design goals and take them deeper i to more usable and more inviting directions.

hulitu 5y ago

> It seems very similar to Win11 and looks rather pretty. This sentence contradicts itself. Some people say that there is a certain beauty in ugliness, but i don't think it applies to windows 10 and 11.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

Seems like around Windows 95 was the last time designers put a thought to designing for usability and around the actual constraints in the medium. Most modern UIs seem to focus almost entirely on clean aesthetics, usually mindlessly drawing on conventions that serve limitations that exist in mobile, such as being really conservative about using screen space. I think desktop Firefox is an excellent example of this. A lot of very useful features are hidden behind an additional click on a minuscule ≡-button (What does that symbol even mean? Why doesn't it have a label?) All, it appears, to save hundreds pixels of screen space, while desktop displays are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You can't even use full screen windows on many desktop displays, you'll get neck pain from literally having to turn your head to read.

projektfu 5y ago
Worth mentioning that you can turn the pull down menus back on in Firefox.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Right, but my point is this: What is the point in saving some sub 1% of screen space from a screen that is typically too big to even be fully utilized? Why are all the buttons tiny and hard to click, why do they have hieroglyphic symbols with no labels? A button for opening an ad for a third party app (Pocket) is important enough to be immediately accessible. Why aren't my bookmarks deemed as important? Makes a lot of sense on a mobile device where screen space is very limited. But on desktop?
prmoustache 5y ago
How many times do you really use that ≡ "burger" menu button of firefox in a day really? And after how many times do you end up having learned the keyboard shortcuts? There are only a handful of them that don't have a keyboard shortcut.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Is there a keyboard shortcut for the ≡ menu? How do I open the bookmarks bar?