4 ms·

Totally agree. Unix Motif, Windows 3/95/98, Classic MacOS... they were all highly usable. I crave the relentlessly, unashamed, unambiguousness of these old UIs

by tomxor 4y ago

Totally agree. Unix Motif, Windows 3/95/98, Classic MacOS... they were all highly usable. I crave the relentlessly, unashamed, unambiguousness of these old UIs, compared to modern UI which has devolved into something just as pretentious as the much hated skeuomorphism stage, only at the other end of the spectrum: extreme aesthetic minimalism at all cost (the user's cost).

duskwuff 4y ago
Classic Mac OS in what era? The System 7 UI toolkit was underdeveloped, and forced a lot of applications to roll their own controls (with mixed success). The System 8 "Platinum" appearance mostly resolved that, though; I'd point to that as an excellent design for the era.
- wsc981 4y ago
  I am not sure what you meant with underdeveloped, but I felt as time moved on, macOS became kind of cluttered with many small components that (from my POV) didn't add much. Perhaps you feel many of these components added much needed features? Usability wise, I feel System 7 was the high point of Classic macOS.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    The Control Manager in System 7 (and earlier) was pretty barebones in terms of features. Buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, scroll bars, popup menus, and text fields -- and that was it. A lot of commonly used UI elements, like heavy lines around default buttons or boxes around groups of controls, weren't part of the Control Manager and had to be implemented by individual applications -- and anything more complex like tables or toolbars was right out. The System 7 version of Control Manager didn't apply much in the way of styling to controls, either. Windows were white; controls were black and white. Scrollbars got a bit of color in System 7, but nothing else did. It was funtional, but it wasn't pretty, and a lot of applications used custom CDEFs to add a bit of shading and color.

4 ms·

Totally agree. Unix Motif, Windows 3/95/98, Classic MacOS... they were all highly usable. I crave the relentlessly, unashamed, unambiguousness of these old UIs

by tomxor 4y ago

duskwuff 4y ago
Classic Mac OS in what era? The System 7 UI toolkit was underdeveloped, and forced a lot of applications to roll their own controls (with mixed success). The System 8 "Platinum" appearance mostly resolved that, though; I'd point to that as an excellent design for the era.
- wsc981 4y ago
  I am not sure what you meant with underdeveloped, but I felt as time moved on, macOS became kind of cluttered with many small components that (from my POV) didn't add much. Perhaps you feel many of these components added much needed features? Usability wise, I feel System 7 was the high point of Classic macOS.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    The Control Manager in System 7 (and earlier) was pretty barebones in terms of features. Buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, scroll bars, popup menus, and text fields -- and that was it. A lot of commonly used UI elements, like heavy lines around default buttons or boxes around groups of controls, weren't part of the Control Manager and had to be implemented by individual applications -- and anything more complex like tables or toolbars was right out. The System 7 version of Control Manager didn't apply much in the way of styling to controls, either. Windows were white; controls were black and white. Scrollbars got a bit of color in System 7, but nothing else did. It was funtional, but it wasn't pretty, and a lot of applications used custom CDEFs to add a bit of shading and color.