9 ms·

I don't know if it's nostalgia, if it's XP being the pinacle of user interface design, or if it was the thunderbird designers, but the screenshot looks better t

I don't know if it's nostalgia, if it's XP being the pinacle of user interface design, or if it was the thunderbird designers, but the screenshot looks better than current thunderbird. The balance between the items and how much that ask for your attention feels just right

boomboomsubban 4y ago
I'm think it's a combination of nostalgia and familiarity. Those were the kinds of UI's I used when I took classes about computer programs and spent a lot of time independently learning programs. All those hours spent makes it feel more comfortable though it may not actually be better.
- jrm4 4y ago
  I think ""preferred familiarity" over time is literally the only meaningful definition of "better." I'm growing quite tired of the deeply stupid idea that these UX/UI people understand how I work better than I do.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    "Preferred familiarity" is a subjective thing, and since you've developed your preferences there have been a billion new computer users who are more familiar with the modern designs. That's why the designs change, things like Thunderbird aren't the trend setters. Ideally both UI gets maintained, but that's not always feasible.
    - jrm4 4y ago
      Sure, but lets keep clear what you're saying: "Despite the existence of working preferences, so called modern-designers spend their days changing things for potentially no reason -- but even if there is a good reason -- they're also breaking backward compatibility." In other words, let's not pretend how design-fashion is executed is always good or even neutral in operation in terms of helping people.
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        >let's not pretend how design-fashion is executed is always good or even neutral in operation in terms of helping people. This isn't unique to modern design. Your preference is also full of bad decisions that don't always help people. You've spent decades using them and are now accustomed to the way they work and don't even see them as flaws. It's largely familiarity, and is another form of "things were better back in my days."
        jrm4 4y ago
        Come on. Please don't pretend that there aren't severe institutional defects now in how design-fashion is executed that go beyond "sometimes old is better, sometimes new is better." Large centralized purveyors of software with monopolistic-type power and no liability are generally (perhaps subconsciously) are frequently incentivized to push design into negative directions, e.g. dark patterns.
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
        I understand why you think these things, but at the end of the day many of these new designs are quite popular. For example, every time I even momentarily end up on the new Reddit, I think "how could the designers have approved this cosmic mess?" Yet presumably people like it, or at least it's profitable as I doubt they'd stubbornly hold onto something for four years if it were driving users away. Remember the old "utility first" brought us things like Clippy too. And the generation before mine also sees all that GUI nonsense as cruft too. Richard Stallman talks about how he still does basically everything in emacs.
        jrm4 4y ago
        You're implying that they're popular because they were chosen by users. Often times, they weren't. They were effectively forced on people.
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > since you've developed your preferences there have been a billion new computer users who are more familiar with the modern designs. That's why the designs change That is logically impossible; the designs cannot change due to the emergence of users who are more familiar with future designs than they are with present designs. No such users can ever exist.
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        It's only impossible if there's no other software. The users at Thunderbird's release were familiar with Netscape and Outlook so the design emulated them. Any new user is familiar with Chrome and Gmail, so Thunderbird moves towards designs the new users would be familiar with.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Then you're arguing that Thunderbird is trying to emulate Chrome. But you haven't even attempted to argue why the design changed. Chrome was not facing a population that was familiar with designs from the future. > The users at Thunderbird's release were familiar with Netscape and Outlook so the design emulated them. If this were true, then Chrome's designs wouldn't have changed. You can't have this both ways.
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
        Outside possibly contradictory influences are a thing. Like much of modern software is influenced by the rise of mobile, where the different limitations necessitated different designs.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
It's not just nostalgia: - the buttons are big - there is high contrasts - sections are clearly delimited I have the current Thunderbird open all day, and I'm constantly searching for things. It looks much better, much leaner and cleaner. But nothing stands out from the rest, everything is a shade of grey, buttons are flat, section are loosely separated or sometimes merged, labels don't have icons. It's like the debate about cars with touch screen or buttons: the touch screen makes for a much better look, but its usability sucks. It's not just thunderbird. Phone apps, web apps, they all follow trends that have nothing to do with usability. They copy each others in loop, bored designers go one more round (see ubuntu for an extreme example of this), A/B testing tells manager people downloaded your app more because of the pretty UI or screenshots on the short term. But the current design is a usability disaster, and is only partially working because the UI are getting dumbed down more and more. Apps have less and less accessible buttons and menus. It makes you less productive, but it's easier for the average user, thanks to the paradox of choice. Because of this, having a lean UI is not as terrible, since you don't display much on the viewport anyway (e.g: youtube latest changes, or just tik tok). But of course, advanced users pay a price for that. Also, you can't do it for professional software unless you want to render it harder to use. Case in point: Thunderbird.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  We used to have artistic masterpieces for icons compared to the near incomprehensible "silhouette" style uninspired hieroglyphs we call icons today.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  To me the 1.0 screenshot looks nearly identical to the Thunderbird window I have open right now. I don't have email-related buttons, since I have no email account configured. I use Thunderbird for RSS feeds. But the rest of the interface is exactly the same, except that the window topbar is tabbed in modern Thunderbird. As for Windows XP being the pinnacle of design, I always hated its default theme (visible in the screenshot of the setup window, though, oddly, not in the screenshot of the running app) and changed it to the Windows 95 theme on all of my computers. I still hate the XP look. EDIT: I was wrong; I do have the email-related buttons. I've just never noticed them. Instead of square icons, they are now text labels (with pointless icons next to the text in most cases). I don't really see that as a problem. Usually the problem in modern design is that the pointless icon is viewed as a substitute for the text.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
> pinnacle It was nearby. The class of NeXTSTEP, Win2k, SGI, and aspects of the Amiga/MacOS9 around the turn of the century are some of the best computing interfaces ever made. Intuitive, direct, consistent, easy to learn & use. Labels concise. Apps respected system themes with the exception of a few "skinz" media players, and they were even customizable! Gentlemen, we have the technology. I'd prefer one of these with the addition of modern niceties like menu search. Mate is close, but it is slowly rotting via GTK3/4 from the bottom up. I.e. the Disks app on a 4k monitor is a mess.
- _chu1 4y ago
  I think KDE still has the style of older systems, or at least to me it seems like it does. GTK DEs are all a total disaster and definitely a sinking ship for anyone wishing to have any customization or usability over their system, I booted up XFCE the other day on Linux Mint, and 3 different programs all had their own title bars. Things like that don't ever seem to happen on Windows or KDE.
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    Yes. KDE however suffered for many years from what I like to call "programmer art." Including bad fonts and padding. It also had a bewildering amount of control panels and tweak-ability. Better than a lack of them, but Win2k had it just about right. A reasonable amount of configurability, mostly good defaults, and just about anything possible via a setting hidden underneath. Gnome and KDE seem to have chosen opposite sides of that happy medium. Looking at recent screen shots KDE seems to have fixed the first problem. I'll have to try it again.
- ranger_danger 4y ago
  You might also be interested in Hot Dog Linux, mlvwm, nsCDE, MaXXdesktop or any of the "novelty" CSS themes such as: https://github.com/andersevenrud/retro-css-shell-demo https://github.com/andersevenrud/retro-css-shell-demo https://github.com/arturbien/React95 https://github.com/arturbien/React95 https://github.com/botoxparty/XP.css https://github.com/botoxparty/XP.css https://github.com/Gioni06/terminal.css https://github.com/Gioni06/terminal.css https://github.com/jdan/98.css https://github.com/jdan/98.css https://github.com/jianzhongli/csswin10 https://github.com/jianzhongli/csswin10 https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386 https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386 https://github.com/lachsfilet/Renkbench https://github.com/lachsfilet/Renkbench https://github.com/lolstring/window98-html-css-js https://github.com/lolstring/window98-html-css-js https://github.com/micah5/PSone.css https://github.com/micah5/PSone.css https://github.com/nostalgic-css/NES.css https://github.com/nostalgic-css/NES.css https://github.com/npjg/classic.css https://github.com/npjg/classic.css https://github.com/robbiebyrd/platinum https://github.com/robbiebyrd/platinum https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn https://github.com/ritenv/retro-desktop https://github.com/ritenv/retro-desktop https://github.com/RoelN/c64css3 https://github.com/RoelN/c64css3 https://github.com/sakofchit/system.css https://github.com/sakofchit/system.css https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss https://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/ https://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/
polski-g 4y ago
Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of GUIs. Things have gotten worse since then. In the past five years they've fallen off a cliff. Absurd amounts of whitespace. Buttons without borders. Icons only instead of text buttons. And I have to reiterate the absurd whitespace quantities.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Exactly this. Aero was great not because of itself, but because it was basically Fisher-Price Windows 2000, where things were clearly things. The Mac from around that time was similar, even if pinstriped. Touch and the anti-skeumorphism has destroyed computer UIs.
  - wtallis 4y ago
    IIRC, Aero was the Windows Vista UI disaster, while Luna was the reasonably usable (albeit excessive) Windows XP theme.
- sigzero 4y ago
  Agree with you there.
- domador 4y ago
  I would call the design aesthetic du jour "the White Wasteland". It's a symptom of what I'd call "fundaminimalism". Minimalism isn't automatically better when it comes to user interface design, but too many designers seem to think it is. On a related note, why does everyone have to slavishly imitate Google's ugly, bland, undifferentiated interfaces, why?!? Nowadays, GUI seems to stand for Google-Ugly Interface.
  - HeckFeck 4y ago
    > the White Wasteland > fundaminimalism > Google-Ugly Interface The irony is that you put more effort into coining those pejoratives than the UX designers put into their UIs.
- pjerem 4y ago
stormbrew 4y ago
I'm still mad at whoever decided to hide the entire menu bar in a burger menu and made everything in it take twice as long to find and use.
- Narishma 4y ago
  If it's like Firefox, the menu bar shows up when you press Alt.
  - heldergg 4y ago
    And with two clicks you can make it permanently visible.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Took me two years to accidentally find this. That's a usability sample.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  When they take new designs to user research, one of the questions asked is "Which one of these options looks 'cleaner' in your opinion, A or B?" And when one of the objectives of the org has been declared as "clean up the UI" I'm sure you can imagine why we end up with the disgusting hamburger menus everywhere. And the people who championed a 'win' from such a change will parachute to the next company and do the same thing.
fomine3 4y ago
I prefer Win8 (or non-initial Win10, initially it lacks color on title bar IIRC), it's well colored but not disrupting by transparent.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

I'm think it's a combination of nostalgia and familiarity. Those were the kinds of UI's I used when I took classes about computer programs and spent a lot of time independently learning programs. All those hours spent makes it feel more comfortable though it may not actually be better.

jrm4 4y ago
I think ""preferred familiarity" over time is literally the only meaningful definition of "better." I'm growing quite tired of the deeply stupid idea that these UX/UI people understand how I work better than I do.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  "Preferred familiarity" is a subjective thing, and since you've developed your preferences there have been a billion new computer users who are more familiar with the modern designs. That's why the designs change, things like Thunderbird aren't the trend setters. Ideally both UI gets maintained, but that's not always feasible.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Sure, but lets keep clear what you're saying: "Despite the existence of working preferences, so called modern-designers spend their days changing things for potentially no reason -- but even if there is a good reason -- they're also breaking backward compatibility." In other words, let's not pretend how design-fashion is executed is always good or even neutral in operation in terms of helping people.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      >let's not pretend how design-fashion is executed is always good or even neutral in operation in terms of helping people. This isn't unique to modern design. Your preference is also full of bad decisions that don't always help people. You've spent decades using them and are now accustomed to the way they work and don't even see them as flaws. It's largely familiarity, and is another form of "things were better back in my days."
      - jrm4 4y ago
        Come on. Please don't pretend that there aren't severe institutional defects now in how design-fashion is executed that go beyond "sometimes old is better, sometimes new is better." Large centralized purveyors of software with monopolistic-type power and no liability are generally (perhaps subconsciously) are frequently incentivized to push design into negative directions, e.g. dark patterns.
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
        I understand why you think these things, but at the end of the day many of these new designs are quite popular. For example, every time I even momentarily end up on the new Reddit, I think "how could the designers have approved this cosmic mess?" Yet presumably people like it, or at least it's profitable as I doubt they'd stubbornly hold onto something for four years if it were driving users away. Remember the old "utility first" brought us things like Clippy too. And the generation before mine also sees all that GUI nonsense as cruft too. Richard Stallman talks about how he still does basically everything in emacs.
        jrm4 4y ago
        You're implying that they're popular because they were chosen by users. Often times, they weren't. They were effectively forced on people.
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > since you've developed your preferences there have been a billion new computer users who are more familiar with the modern designs. That's why the designs change That is logically impossible; the designs cannot change due to the emergence of users who are more familiar with future designs than they are with present designs. No such users can ever exist.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      It's only impossible if there's no other software. The users at Thunderbird's release were familiar with Netscape and Outlook so the design emulated them. Any new user is familiar with Chrome and Gmail, so Thunderbird moves towards designs the new users would be familiar with.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        Then you're arguing that Thunderbird is trying to emulate Chrome. But you haven't even attempted to argue why the design changed. Chrome was not facing a population that was familiar with designs from the future. > The users at Thunderbird's release were familiar with Netscape and Outlook so the design emulated them. If this were true, then Chrome's designs wouldn't have changed. You can't have this both ways.
        boomboomsubban 4y ago
        Outside possibly contradictory influences are a thing. Like much of modern software is influenced by the rise of mobile, where the different limitations necessitated different designs.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

It's not just nostalgia: - the buttons are big - there is high contrasts - sections are clearly delimited I have the current Thunderbird open all day, and I'm constantly searching for things. It looks much better, much leaner and cleaner. But nothing stands out from the rest, everything is a shade of grey, buttons are flat, section are loosely separated or sometimes merged, labels don't have icons. It's like the debate about cars with touch screen or buttons: the touch screen makes for a much better look, but its usability sucks. It's not just thunderbird. Phone apps, web apps, they all follow trends that have nothing to do with usability. They copy each others in loop, bored designers go one more round (see ubuntu for an extreme example of this), A/B testing tells manager people downloaded your app more because of the pretty UI or screenshots on the short term. But the current design is a usability disaster, and is only partially working because the UI are getting dumbed down more and more. Apps have less and less accessible buttons and menus. It makes you less productive, but it's easier for the average user, thanks to the paradox of choice. Because of this, having a lean UI is not as terrible, since you don't display much on the viewport anyway (e.g: youtube latest changes, or just tik tok). But of course, advanced users pay a price for that. Also, you can't do it for professional software unless you want to render it harder to use. Case in point: Thunderbird.

wildrhythms 4y ago
We used to have artistic masterpieces for icons compared to the near incomprehensible "silhouette" style uninspired hieroglyphs we call icons today.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
To me the 1.0 screenshot looks nearly identical to the Thunderbird window I have open right now. I don't have email-related buttons, since I have no email account configured. I use Thunderbird for RSS feeds. But the rest of the interface is exactly the same, except that the window topbar is tabbed in modern Thunderbird. As for Windows XP being the pinnacle of design, I always hated its default theme (visible in the screenshot of the setup window, though, oddly, not in the screenshot of the running app) and changed it to the Windows 95 theme on all of my computers. I still hate the XP look. EDIT: I was wrong; I do have the email-related buttons. I've just never noticed them. Instead of square icons, they are now text labels (with pointless icons next to the text in most cases). I don't really see that as a problem. Usually the problem in modern design is that the pointless icon is viewed as a substitute for the text.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

> pinnacle It was nearby. The class of NeXTSTEP, Win2k, SGI, and aspects of the Amiga/MacOS9 around the turn of the century are some of the best computing interfaces ever made. Intuitive, direct, consistent, easy to learn & use. Labels concise. Apps respected system themes with the exception of a few "skinz" media players, and they were even customizable! Gentlemen, we have the technology. I'd prefer one of these with the addition of modern niceties like menu search. Mate is close, but it is slowly rotting via GTK3/4 from the bottom up. I.e. the Disks app on a 4k monitor is a mess.

_chu1 4y ago
I think KDE still has the style of older systems, or at least to me it seems like it does. GTK DEs are all a total disaster and definitely a sinking ship for anyone wishing to have any customization or usability over their system, I booted up XFCE the other day on Linux Mint, and 3 different programs all had their own title bars. Things like that don't ever seem to happen on Windows or KDE.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Yes. KDE however suffered for many years from what I like to call "programmer art." Including bad fonts and padding. It also had a bewildering amount of control panels and tweak-ability. Better than a lack of them, but Win2k had it just about right. A reasonable amount of configurability, mostly good defaults, and just about anything possible via a setting hidden underneath. Gnome and KDE seem to have chosen opposite sides of that happy medium. Looking at recent screen shots KDE seems to have fixed the first problem. I'll have to try it again.
ranger_danger 4y ago
You might also be interested in Hot Dog Linux, mlvwm, nsCDE, MaXXdesktop or any of the "novelty" CSS themes such as: https://github.com/andersevenrud/retro-css-shell-demo https://github.com/andersevenrud/retro-css-shell-demo https://github.com/arturbien/React95 https://github.com/arturbien/React95 https://github.com/botoxparty/XP.css https://github.com/botoxparty/XP.css https://github.com/Gioni06/terminal.css https://github.com/Gioni06/terminal.css https://github.com/jdan/98.css https://github.com/jdan/98.css https://github.com/jianzhongli/csswin10 https://github.com/jianzhongli/csswin10 https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386 https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386 https://github.com/lachsfilet/Renkbench https://github.com/lachsfilet/Renkbench https://github.com/lolstring/window98-html-css-js https://github.com/lolstring/window98-html-css-js https://github.com/micah5/PSone.css https://github.com/micah5/PSone.css https://github.com/nostalgic-css/NES.css https://github.com/nostalgic-css/NES.css https://github.com/npjg/classic.css https://github.com/npjg/classic.css https://github.com/robbiebyrd/platinum https://github.com/robbiebyrd/platinum https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn https://github.com/ritenv/retro-desktop https://github.com/ritenv/retro-desktop https://github.com/RoelN/c64css3 https://github.com/RoelN/c64css3 https://github.com/sakofchit/system.css https://github.com/sakofchit/system.css https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss https://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/ https://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/

polski-g 4y ago

Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of GUIs. Things have gotten worse since then. In the past five years they've fallen off a cliff. Absurd amounts of whitespace. Buttons without borders. Icons only instead of text buttons. And I have to reiterate the absurd whitespace quantities.

bombcar 4y ago
Exactly this. Aero was great not because of itself, but because it was basically Fisher-Price Windows 2000, where things were clearly things. The Mac from around that time was similar, even if pinstriped. Touch and the anti-skeumorphism has destroyed computer UIs.
- wtallis 4y ago
  IIRC, Aero was the Windows Vista UI disaster, while Luna was the reasonably usable (albeit excessive) Windows XP theme.
sigzero 4y ago
Agree with you there.
domador 4y ago
I would call the design aesthetic du jour "the White Wasteland". It's a symptom of what I'd call "fundaminimalism". Minimalism isn't automatically better when it comes to user interface design, but too many designers seem to think it is. On a related note, why does everyone have to slavishly imitate Google's ugly, bland, undifferentiated interfaces, why?!? Nowadays, GUI seems to stand for Google-Ugly Interface.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  > the White Wasteland > fundaminimalism > Google-Ugly Interface The irony is that you put more effort into coining those pejoratives than the UX designers put into their UIs.
pjerem 4y ago

stormbrew 4y ago

I'm still mad at whoever decided to hide the entire menu bar in a burger menu and made everything in it take twice as long to find and use.

Narishma 4y ago
If it's like Firefox, the menu bar shows up when you press Alt.
- heldergg 4y ago
  And with two clicks you can make it permanently visible.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Took me two years to accidentally find this. That's a usability sample.
wildrhythms 4y ago
When they take new designs to user research, one of the questions asked is "Which one of these options looks 'cleaner' in your opinion, A or B?" And when one of the objectives of the org has been declared as "clean up the UI" I'm sure you can imagine why we end up with the disgusting hamburger menus everywhere. And the people who championed a 'win' from such a change will parachute to the next company and do the same thing.

fomine3 4y ago

I prefer Win8 (or non-initial Win10, initially it lacks color on title bar IIRC), it's well colored but not disrupting by transparent.