16 ms·

Designing Windows 95’s User Interface (2018)

228 points by cpeterso 4y ago

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Some of the greatest UX of all time. Shame how far we have fallen in the current flat world.
- pdntspa 4y ago
  I know, like can the UI/UX people please please PLEASE pay more attention to this stuff!
  - worewood 4y ago
    UX goal is not enhance user experience anymore, it's improve profits by manipulation of the user experience.
  - warning26 4y ago
    You'll find that the vast majority of bad UX decisions aren't coming from designers themselves, but from management. See also: A/B testing UIs to maximize arbitrary metrics
    - pdntspa 4y ago
      Designers are the gatekeepers though, maybe they should stand up to these folks more often.
      - nvrspyx 4y ago
        I think one of the main problems is that a surface-level argument can easily be made that user engagement represents the quality of the user experience (i.e. "users that spend a lot of time in the app clearly like it"), despite falling apart if you dig deeper than the surface. The allure of short-term profits makes such an argument attractive to upper leadership. It also makes it more difficult for a lower-level employee, like a designer, to convince them against it without direct evidence that optimizing for user productivity is better than optimizing for user engagement. Combine the ease of making that argument with potential financial incentives to the designers to optimize for that, then you get relatively easy conformity to that goal. I'm sure there's plenty of designers that will happily accept it, so as a company, you can easily replace any designers that push back.
        pdntspa 4y ago
        I suspect a lot of that is because designers aren't often technology lifers, rather seemingly entering this field smelling profit and riding the wave as it were. I don't know what the solution is here other than firing them all and replacing them with engineers and passionate tech nerds who remember their history. Which won't ever happen, and the situation is hopeless. The world we could have had...
        warning26 4y ago
        Nonsense; plenty of people in UX, myself included, have tech backgrounds. Software engineers aren't immune from the "higher metrics == uSeRs lOvE iT" trap. Consider early Google, when they infamously A/B tested 50 shades of blue for a button. Did that actually improve anything? Of course not.
    - nvrspyx 4y ago
      I wouldn't call those metrics arbitrary, they're just trying to measure something different. It's no longer measuring user productivity, it's measuring user engagement. It's no longer how quickly a user familiarizes and gets something done with the software, it's how often and how long the user uses the software.
- trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  A few people are trying to claim it back! My current favorite - https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar
  - dixie_land 4y ago
    Nice! Does it work with OpenShell?
  - prezjordan 4y ago
    This is unbelievable. Thanks so much for sharing.
  - lloydatkinson 4y ago
    I wonder what the differences between Classic, 2000, 95/98 themes are when put side by side.
    - Kwpolska 4y ago
      Fonts and colors, matching the original OS. On Windows 11, the System Classic skin is a very light gray and uses Segoe UI. 95/98 uses a darker gray and Microsoft Sans Serif. 2000 uses a slightly lighter gray and Tahoma. ME uses the 2000 gray and Tahoma. On Windows XP, the 95/98 theme was "Windows Classic", and the 2000 theme was "Windows Standard". Or if you want a visual comparison of the original UIs, https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/running#win95 https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/running#win95
  - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
    This is amazing. Instant install. I wish there was a way to theme all of the UI to be like 95.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Windows 95 was an unprecedented advance in the human/computer GUI interface, which is still reverberating today. Even many Mac users copy aspects of it (put your Applications folder in your dock and you have a start menu/programs).
  - zapzupnz 4y ago
    In fairness, Mac users were already doing that in 1991 with System 7's Apple Menu Items folder. You could put anything you wanted in that folder, and it would show up in the Apple Menu. It was a good idea to put aliases to your most commonly-used apps in it. I remember doing that all the way up through Mac OS 9.
- bitwize 4y ago
  I keep wondering, if flat is the new hot thing, why don't people just use libXaw to build their modern, cutting-edge UIs and not hobble my computer's performance in the process?
  - hulitu 4y ago
    Because they cannot draw some rectangles like in the good old days. They have to "compose" a 3D surface of the screen. /s
  - superdisk 4y ago
    libXaw is difficult to use and there aren't really suitable widgets for many purposes-- it only really has buttons and textboxes. It doesn't support sophisticated layouts either, it just stretches the controls rather than letting you define any sort of anchors/margins.
warning26 4y ago
I was playing with a Win98 computer the other day, and it is amazing how well most of the UX has held up even now. And it's so fast, especially considering the limitations of the hardware it was running on. Really interesting seeing some of the design process that resulted in it.
- guestbest 4y ago
  It’s amazing how fast everything in the core system runs when it runs trusted.
  - hayley-patton 4y ago
    Didn't putting so much rendering code in kernel-space also produce a lot of security bugs in NT? Would be nice to run trustable code in a trusted context if one wants to do so.
    - guestbest 4y ago
      Security isn’t an issue when everything is trusted
      - hayley-patton 4y ago
        Doesn't seem like a wise thing to do.
- bluedino 4y ago
  It was fast on say, 300mhz and faster hardware, but while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    > while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece. This is pretty much the modern experience with web SPAs, except the hardware can hardly be blamed anymore.
lucb1e 4y ago
Reading this, I wonder about all the UIs that I come across today and feel like they're usually on a scale from flawed to awful (see also: store reviews of software, especially after an update). Not being from the software development world, can anyone who is confirm whether this type of user testing still takes place at all? Or is it perhaps confined to big redesigns, specific user groups (like beginning computer users, even for developer tools like vmware), or other such constraints? Edit: reading further, this is a great example: "Separate UI for Beginners [...] [various problems mentioned] [...] For these reasons and others, we abandoned the idea". These reasons translate directly, one-to-one, to Android's simple homescreen variant that my grandma kept finding somehow, clicking on, and then not being able to use various things on her phone anymore. Nor getting more comfortable with the proper UI. Nor was it consistent with other apps. Android added this feature when, a decade earlier, it was already spotted (long before release, I should note) that such a variant wouldn't help people at all. This doesn't appear to have been thought about or tested in the real world, and I think Android is the most-used OS on the planet. (Not sure if all vendor's shells have this feature as well, but I'm fairly sure it was stock android or at least commonly implemented a few versions ago.)
- warning26 4y ago
  Generally big companies hire UX Researchers, whose job is specifically to conduct these types of tests. To address your second question, it depends on the test. For example, during a recent test where I work (fairly large tech company), we used user logs to identify a set of "power users", since that's who we were interested in learning more about.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Nowadays I fear many UX researchers are hired to find reasons for whatever silly design decision someone in power wants to do. Or perhaps all the "easy pickings" have been picked and there's not much left.
cardanome 4y ago
Back then you could test your UI on people that were a completely blank slate, having possible never used a computer before. You could focus on making the best possible UI there is. Now, users come already with certain habits and expectations developed by years of of computer use. This means, even if you really cared about the user experience of your customers you would only be able to make incremental improvements to the status quo or else be be rejected for being too different. Not that certain standards are not also valuable but it still a sobering thought that we are in a local optimum that we will never be able to escape from. (And I fear most products are not even hitting the local optimum but are getting worse when it comes to UI design but that is besides the point.)
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  The beautiful thing is, you can still just make a UI that mimics Windows 95, and get all of the benefits of that research.
- vintagedave 4y ago
  > Back then you could test your UI on people that were a completely blank slate, having possible never used a computer before. You could focus on making the best possible UI there is. This is a really great point. Like many others on this thread I miss "old" UI design, and like many posters can explain why. There's been a large transition to hiding UI, not marking interactable UI, and not spacially locating related UI elements. Recently I watched one of my nieces use her phone. She was trying to do something, frustrated and telling me, but had not yet asked me to help. (I offer to help, but not to do something for them - to guide but let them achieve their goal.) I realised she was essentially tapping the screen looking for something that responded to taps. She didn't know what would react. Now, she knows lists can be scrolled, buttons etc can be clicked... but does she? Because there are no buttons, often, today and the button she needed, which I could see onscreen, was just text, no border indicating clickability. I've heard anecdotally that the big UI designers in companies like Apple don't mind this because 'everyone already knows how to use their phones' and Macs / Windows. This ignores the young -- but we often ignore the young and expect them to learn -- and it ignores the elderly, those with bad eyesight, those who have not before now had the financial opportunity to own something, and so forth. There are lots, and always will be lots, of new people. And I think that designing such that it can be used only by those who already know how to use it is a failure. Not just because there are always those who don't know, but because designing such that it can be used by anyone is more optimal. And finally, that designing such that it can be be used by _anyone_ means _everyone_ can use it. Phrased another way, another golden quote I cannot attribute is, 'accessibility is for everyone.' Which is a way of saying, designing for the non-average user who may have difficulties makes usage much easier for the average user too.
LarryDarrell 4y ago
I would love to see a similar paper by the Windows 11 design team. The 95 group seemed to be very responsive to how users were using or failing to use the OS. I've been on Win11 for a few months, and I'm confused who these changes are for. It could be that the Eternal September means things have to be dumbed down and locked down, catering to the least capable users. Or maybe design decisions are being made at a higher level for inscrutable business reasons. Either way, I'm feeling left behind. I think there's a tension between Desktop, Laptop and Tablet users that the Windows Team has decided to just ignore. Or they have decided that Desktop users are not important. I spent extra for a widescreen monitor that would give me more vertical pixels. What does Windows think I want to do with these pixels? Use them to display a big, honkin' new Taskbar, apparently. Why did they take away the option to make it thinner? Why is "Every user must have a Big Fat Taskbar" the hill they want to die on? And the modern-ish design language feels like it was designed to waste space and hide information. I have a huge screen, I don't want a 3+ click minimum to get to any setting. Third-party bloatware, permanent rounded corners for some reason, the take-it-or-I-dare-you-to-switch-to-Linux attitude does not give me warm fuzzy fealings. I would switch to linux, but I make my living with .Net/C#/WPF, so great job Microsoft, I feel trapped rather than valued. For now, I'm still able to cobble together the tools that make Windows a mostly-pleasant Desktop experience. I use Directory Opus, Open Shell (with ExplorerPatcher for Win11), Everything Search, and some registry edits to do things like bring the normal Context Menu back.
- Sakos 4y ago
  Some changes are really cool, but then marred by bizarre UX decisions that make absolutely zero sense to me and make things everything more tedious and difficult and I'm wondering how they're making these decisions. It's not being made by somebody who actually cares about Windows users.
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  This is not exactly the document you’re asking for, but I think the clearest explanation of the origin of modern Microsoft flatness back in the Windows Phone 7 days is “How print design is the future of interaction” (2011) [1], by the late Mike Kruzeniski. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120314071640/http://kruzeniski.com/2011/how-print-design-is-the-future-of-interaction/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120314071640/http://kruzeniski..., seemingly missed by HN at the time in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301723 (6 points, 0 comments).
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
I think windows 95/98 era was the peak of UI discoverability. As a kid, I and my friends could learn and explore how a program worked just by expanding all the menus and opening the various dialogs. Dialogs which were filled with fields and their descriptions! Before then, it was the world of DOS and you had to know what you were doing ahead of time. And now, UIs are dynamic, initially hiding stuff from the user and at worst provide zero indication of what functionality is available. I once used a phone app for months not knowing there was an extra screen you could open by sliding right on the main UI page. I only found it by accident one day, because there were no hints in the UI..
- dec0dedab0de 4y ago
  Many dos programs with a gui had all the same menus and fields before Windows. They just ran one at a time.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    I still believe that the file manager XTree for MS-DOS had the best user interface of any file manager that I have ever used, in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or MacOS, allowing one to perform any task with a minimum of key presses. It already had separate histories for each text field of the user interface, in which items could be made persistent. Even today, most programs with GUIs have much more poorly implemented histories, if they have them. Also for MS-DOS, the BRIEF editor for programmers used tiling windows and (optionally) a menu-driven interface that was better designed than that of most later text editors. It also allowed the redefinition of what happens when any key on the keyboard is pressed. The default action of inserting in the text the associated character could be replaced by an arbitrary script, which made easy the implementation of things like auto-completion or syntax coloring. Nevertheless, even if some important applications in Windows 95 were still regressions from the point of the user interface in comparison with what was available for MS-DOS, Windows 95 looked much nicer than anything using the standard VGA text modes and it was the version to which I have switched from MS-DOS. Even if I had previously tried Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11, those had felt too much like useless toys, in comparison with the professional programs that I was using under MS-DOS. The Windows 95 taskbar was definitely a very important improvement over Windows 3.x.
matsemann 4y ago
Too bad they didn't read these notes before gutting the taskbar in Win11. It's so unusable, so slow when you can't "ungroup" stuff. Made me actually reinstall and go back to Win10.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Or the task bar grouping in Windows 7 that I've found most people actually don't prefer when you reveal that it's optional. A lot of people also like it, maybe as much as 40% or so, but when I look over someone's shoulder (who had been using 7 for ages already) and I wondered out loud how they manage to work with that task bar, they were usually happy to learn of a way to just see open programs instead of having this submenu structure plus a lot of unused task bar space, even if that meant getting used to a new way of working again. Or the joke of a start menu from Windows 8 that presumably Ballmer liked a lot. You even had to make some hidden gesture (swish and flick, professor flitwick would say) to get to the settings only to find the 'shut down' option. Windows 9x was a bit gray but otherwise mostly made sense. Windows 10 seems to have gone back to the state of things at 7, except now the settings are at 200% zoom/whitespace and all over the place and I've heard everyone from beginner to guru wonder where the heck they hid xyz. Windows 11 you've already covered. Precisely this sort of thing is why I wondered in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33776750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33776750) whether this type of testing happens anymore at all, or whether it is constrained in some way.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    > except now the settings are all over the place On Windows 11, it's very rare to have to use the old Control Panel. It still exists for some uncommon settings, but nearly everything has been moved to the new settings. And everything is actually intelligently grouped. I only wish you could have multiple Settings windows open at once.
    - willnonya 4y ago
      That's not really been my experience. I do agree about needing multiple settings windows opened at once, especially when one is already open and you need to open a seemingly unrelated screen and lose your place.
lstamour 4y ago
Note this is still on the internet at https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 The blog post is (2018) and the original article it republishes is (1996) according to Google. You can also find it on Archive.org at https://web.archive.org/web/20220504061157/https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 https://web.archive.org/web/20220504061157/https://dl.acm.or...
teddyh 4y ago
Again, weirdly, not a single word on how Windows 95 copied the title bar design and buttons from NeXTSTEP. See, for instance, here: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#full https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#full The “close window” (“×”) button is identical, and Windows 95 re-purposed NeXTSTEP’s “minimize” button into a “maximize” button. But you can still see why NeXTSTEP’s “minimize” button looks that way; it resembles a NeXTSTEP application icon, seen at the bottom on the above screenshot. Windows 95 did not, sadly, copy the very useful behavior of the “close window” button in NeXTSTEP: It changed shape if the contents of a window was not saved, as seen here: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#texteditor https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#textedit...
hazelnut-tree 4y ago
I still think the biggest user interface (UI) change from Microsoft was the change from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. There were so many features and improvements e.g. the re-designed Open/Save dialog (not much changed since then). Later versions of Windows have never made the same leap between new versions of Windows. Sure, there are refined or tweaked features (or regressed!), but each new version of Windows felt like an incremental update from the previous version. I think the next leap in UI and visual design from Microsoft was...Windows Phone 8 (2012). It was a refreshing and different approach to mobile design. The visual language 'Metro' worked well on mobile touch screens. But Microsoft took the bad decision to transplant 'Metro' (flat design) to the desktop. The result is a clumsy, jumble of inconsistent screens. It simply doesn't work.
forgotmypw17 4y ago
I'm working on an Any Browser framework for making websites, and this means testing with IE 3.0 and up. After installing Word 97, I have found it such a pleasure to use that I've started doing a lot of my writing in it. From inside of a VM, it is still more responsive and accessible than most other things I have to use today.
butz 4y ago
It is sad, that nowadays they are just slapping everything on existing UI without much of a thought. And yet, even under several layers of "improvements" one still can find UIs from Windows 95 days, hardly changed.
kristopolous 4y ago
I've long suspected the start menu was intended to be on the top of the screen. In all other applications when you want to shut it down, it's the last option on the list. If you move the start menu to the top, then shutdown does indeed become the last on the list and the most common option, "Programs" becomes the closest by Fitts Law standards. Even in the Program Manager in Windows 3.1, the Run and Shutdown options were the same place but the menu was at the top. From the beginning (of public releases) in Windows 95 you could in fact move the start bar to the top. Having it on bottom was legally much cleaner, especially on the heels of 6-year saga of the classic Apple vs. Microsoft "look and feel" lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros.... Anyway, this is 100% speculative - there is a few builds with it on the top, such as Windows 95 build 90c https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_95_build_90c https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_95_build_90c but it starts on the bottom and quickly moves back there: https://betawiki.net/wiki/Category:Windows_95_builds https://betawiki.net/wiki/Category:Windows_95_builds But really, menu bar on the top, colorful rainbowish icon on the left, clock on the right, it's very System 7.5 (https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/System_7.5 https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/System_7.5) Reminds me of McDonaldland vs Sid & Marty Krofft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_%26_Marty_Krofft_Television_Productions_Inc._v._McDonald%27s_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_%26_Marty_Krofft_Televisio....), and I quote: "We do not believe that the ordinary reasonable person, let alone a child, viewing these works will even notice that Pufnstuf is wearing a cummerbund while Mayor McCheese is wearing a diplomat’s sash."
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  The next build after 90c had the task bar at the bottom. The start menu was redesigned a few times after that build (which is from early 1994). Why would Microsoft leave shut down in the wrong position? Why did it take them until XP to put the programs option closer to the bottom?
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    I have no idea. It just seems unusual that the closest mouse distance is shut down. Fitt's Law, GOMS analysis and the human processor model were all the rage in the mid-90s. The ordering is pretty unusual but when you push the start menu to the top, all the rules are followed again. Again, pure speculation. I wasn't in the room and I've never been able to directly ask someone who was (although I'd go out of my way for the opportunity). As far as how it took them so long, I'd imagine moving things around on the start menu would require the signoff of an annoyingly large number of people. This is before the modern era of Unilateral UI Designer Autocrat who's given questionably broad authority over everything.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
andrepd 4y ago
Wow! Imagine designing a user interface via careful, evidence- and feedback-driven development, as opposed to just doing what subjectively "looks good" to a sheltered SV """designer""" and shuffling it all every 6 months.
pjmlp 4y ago
They could give the Kent Sullivan documentation to the WinUI team.
richardfey 4y ago
Aww..how cute, when user interfaces were still designed for the users!
superkuh 4y ago
Windows 95/98/2k were the peak of "Open" and "Save As" dialogs. Some linux DE's managed parity in the mid-2000s but then removed features and introduced bugs again as mobile/convergence motivations took over in 2010+. Nowdays you can't even paste into a File->Open dialog in a gtk3 based desktop environment without triggering an error.
- accrual 4y ago
  Indeed. Some of those dialogs are still present in 10 depending on the application, but even the default dialog is pretty good. I like that it's basically just a "lite" Explorer window so I can copy/paste/rename/move/whatever all from within the dialog.
phusion 4y ago
I think I was 11 or 12 when I first installed Win95, once I got some help, it was like a whole new world. Multimedia was finally a real possibility. Seeing Weezer in their "Buddy Holly" music video on the disc was pretty wild, and the "Start Me Up" spoof song about win95 "this windows ninety fiiiiiive, it's suckin' up my driiiive". Good times.
msie 4y ago
I loved the windows 95 ui! Wished there was a way to go back to it (not through windowblinds). Pair it with NT and you have a winning combination.
xenadu02 4y ago
The modern paradigm seems to be "if we can't see it there is no problem". Just hide everything behind a hamburger menu, disclosure triangle, dropdown, or delete the feature entirely! Then the user won't be confused, they'll just assume the things we hid are impossible and thus not complain or ask questions.
guessbest 4y ago
I miss the Multiple-Document-Interface (MDI) application template. It was better in many respects to the tab based interface which overtook it.
bawolff 4y ago
> Our desire to abandon the waterfall model and opt for iterative design fortunately followed similar efforts in other areas of the company, so we had concrete examples of its benefits and feasibility. I think there is something really interesting about how even back in 1992 people were talking about the need to be more agile.
dusted 4y ago
This was such an interesting article.. Of course I was biased by growing up on C64, DOS and Win95.. But, it was really the case for me, I was able to learn all about the OS from just clicking around, and things seemed so strongly to be "in their place", much more so than Win 3.11 which I never liked. It also had a very fluid and gentle gradiant from functionality intended for everyday users to more advanced stuff, without making you feel overwhelmed and without hiding things too much away from you.. Just count how many clicks it takes to install the IPX protocol in Windows 95 vs Windows 10! (Also, good luck with that on 10!) It's also amazing how well it ran on the hardware at the time, 100 mhz and 16 mb ram was Just Fine. The entire OS could probably fit inside the space taken up by the windows 10 start menu I'm sure. I wish M$ would start trying to make a good user experience again, instead of trying to sell candy crush..

228 points by cpeterso 4y ago

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

Some of the greatest UX of all time. Shame how far we have fallen in the current flat world.

pdntspa 4y ago
I know, like can the UI/UX people please please PLEASE pay more attention to this stuff!
- worewood 4y ago
  UX goal is not enhance user experience anymore, it's improve profits by manipulation of the user experience.
- warning26 4y ago
  You'll find that the vast majority of bad UX decisions aren't coming from designers themselves, but from management. See also: A/B testing UIs to maximize arbitrary metrics
  - pdntspa 4y ago
    Designers are the gatekeepers though, maybe they should stand up to these folks more often.
    - nvrspyx 4y ago
      I think one of the main problems is that a surface-level argument can easily be made that user engagement represents the quality of the user experience (i.e. "users that spend a lot of time in the app clearly like it"), despite falling apart if you dig deeper than the surface. The allure of short-term profits makes such an argument attractive to upper leadership. It also makes it more difficult for a lower-level employee, like a designer, to convince them against it without direct evidence that optimizing for user productivity is better than optimizing for user engagement. Combine the ease of making that argument with potential financial incentives to the designers to optimize for that, then you get relatively easy conformity to that goal. I'm sure there's plenty of designers that will happily accept it, so as a company, you can easily replace any designers that push back.
      - pdntspa 4y ago
        I suspect a lot of that is because designers aren't often technology lifers, rather seemingly entering this field smelling profit and riding the wave as it were. I don't know what the solution is here other than firing them all and replacing them with engineers and passionate tech nerds who remember their history. Which won't ever happen, and the situation is hopeless. The world we could have had...
        warning26 4y ago
        Nonsense; plenty of people in UX, myself included, have tech backgrounds. Software engineers aren't immune from the "higher metrics == uSeRs lOvE iT" trap. Consider early Google, when they infamously A/B tested 50 shades of blue for a button. Did that actually improve anything? Of course not.
  - nvrspyx 4y ago
    I wouldn't call those metrics arbitrary, they're just trying to measure something different. It's no longer measuring user productivity, it's measuring user engagement. It's no longer how quickly a user familiarizes and gets something done with the software, it's how often and how long the user uses the software.
trap_goes_hot 4y ago
A few people are trying to claim it back! My current favorite - https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar
- dixie_land 4y ago
  Nice! Does it work with OpenShell?
- prezjordan 4y ago
  This is unbelievable. Thanks so much for sharing.
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  I wonder what the differences between Classic, 2000, 95/98 themes are when put side by side.
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    Fonts and colors, matching the original OS. On Windows 11, the System Classic skin is a very light gray and uses Segoe UI. 95/98 uses a darker gray and Microsoft Sans Serif. 2000 uses a slightly lighter gray and Tahoma. ME uses the 2000 gray and Tahoma. On Windows XP, the 95/98 theme was "Windows Classic", and the 2000 theme was "Windows Standard". Or if you want a visual comparison of the original UIs, https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/running#win95 https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/running#win95
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  This is amazing. Instant install. I wish there was a way to theme all of the UI to be like 95.
bombcar 4y ago
Windows 95 was an unprecedented advance in the human/computer GUI interface, which is still reverberating today. Even many Mac users copy aspects of it (put your Applications folder in your dock and you have a start menu/programs).
- zapzupnz 4y ago
  In fairness, Mac users were already doing that in 1991 with System 7's Apple Menu Items folder. You could put anything you wanted in that folder, and it would show up in the Apple Menu. It was a good idea to put aliases to your most commonly-used apps in it. I remember doing that all the way up through Mac OS 9.
bitwize 4y ago
I keep wondering, if flat is the new hot thing, why don't people just use libXaw to build their modern, cutting-edge UIs and not hobble my computer's performance in the process?
- hulitu 4y ago
  Because they cannot draw some rectangles like in the good old days. They have to "compose" a 3D surface of the screen. /s
- superdisk 4y ago
  libXaw is difficult to use and there aren't really suitable widgets for many purposes-- it only really has buttons and textboxes. It doesn't support sophisticated layouts either, it just stretches the controls rather than letting you define any sort of anchors/margins.

warning26 4y ago

I was playing with a Win98 computer the other day, and it is amazing how well most of the UX has held up even now. And it's so fast, especially considering the limitations of the hardware it was running on. Really interesting seeing some of the design process that resulted in it.

guestbest 4y ago
It’s amazing how fast everything in the core system runs when it runs trusted.
- hayley-patton 4y ago
  Didn't putting so much rendering code in kernel-space also produce a lot of security bugs in NT? Would be nice to run trustable code in a trusted context if one wants to do so.
  - guestbest 4y ago
    Security isn’t an issue when everything is trusted
    - hayley-patton 4y ago
      Doesn't seem like a wise thing to do.
bluedino 4y ago
It was fast on say, 300mhz and faster hardware, but while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > while watching a video where Windows 95 was running on a 486, I remembered how you used to be able to see individual UI elements being drawn on the screen piece by piece. This is pretty much the modern experience with web SPAs, except the hardware can hardly be blamed anymore.

lucb1e 4y ago

Reading this, I wonder about all the UIs that I come across today and feel like they're usually on a scale from flawed to awful (see also: store reviews of software, especially after an update). Not being from the software development world, can anyone who is confirm whether this type of user testing still takes place at all? Or is it perhaps confined to big redesigns, specific user groups (like beginning computer users, even for developer tools like vmware), or other such constraints? Edit: reading further, this is a great example: "Separate UI for Beginners [...] [various problems mentioned] [...] For these reasons and others, we abandoned the idea". These reasons translate directly, one-to-one, to Android's simple homescreen variant that my grandma kept finding somehow, clicking on, and then not being able to use various things on her phone anymore. Nor getting more comfortable with the proper UI. Nor was it consistent with other apps. Android added this feature when, a decade earlier, it was already spotted (long before release, I should note) that such a variant wouldn't help people at all. This doesn't appear to have been thought about or tested in the real world, and I think Android is the most-used OS on the planet. (Not sure if all vendor's shells have this feature as well, but I'm fairly sure it was stock android or at least commonly implemented a few versions ago.)

warning26 4y ago
Generally big companies hire UX Researchers, whose job is specifically to conduct these types of tests. To address your second question, it depends on the test. For example, during a recent test where I work (fairly large tech company), we used user logs to identify a set of "power users", since that's who we were interested in learning more about.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Nowadays I fear many UX researchers are hired to find reasons for whatever silly design decision someone in power wants to do. Or perhaps all the "easy pickings" have been picked and there's not much left.

cardanome 4y ago

Back then you could test your UI on people that were a completely blank slate, having possible never used a computer before. You could focus on making the best possible UI there is. Now, users come already with certain habits and expectations developed by years of of computer use. This means, even if you really cared about the user experience of your customers you would only be able to make incremental improvements to the status quo or else be be rejected for being too different. Not that certain standards are not also valuable but it still a sobering thought that we are in a local optimum that we will never be able to escape from. (And I fear most products are not even hitting the local optimum but are getting worse when it comes to UI design but that is besides the point.)

phendrenad2 4y ago
The beautiful thing is, you can still just make a UI that mimics Windows 95, and get all of the benefits of that research.
vintagedave 4y ago
> Back then you could test your UI on people that were a completely blank slate, having possible never used a computer before. You could focus on making the best possible UI there is. This is a really great point. Like many others on this thread I miss "old" UI design, and like many posters can explain why. There's been a large transition to hiding UI, not marking interactable UI, and not spacially locating related UI elements. Recently I watched one of my nieces use her phone. She was trying to do something, frustrated and telling me, but had not yet asked me to help. (I offer to help, but not to do something for them - to guide but let them achieve their goal.) I realised she was essentially tapping the screen looking for something that responded to taps. She didn't know what would react. Now, she knows lists can be scrolled, buttons etc can be clicked... but does she? Because there are no buttons, often, today and the button she needed, which I could see onscreen, was just text, no border indicating clickability. I've heard anecdotally that the big UI designers in companies like Apple don't mind this because 'everyone already knows how to use their phones' and Macs / Windows. This ignores the young -- but we often ignore the young and expect them to learn -- and it ignores the elderly, those with bad eyesight, those who have not before now had the financial opportunity to own something, and so forth. There are lots, and always will be lots, of new people. And I think that designing such that it can be used only by those who already know how to use it is a failure. Not just because there are always those who don't know, but because designing such that it can be used by anyone is more optimal. And finally, that designing such that it can be be used by _anyone_ means _everyone_ can use it. Phrased another way, another golden quote I cannot attribute is, 'accessibility is for everyone.' Which is a way of saying, designing for the non-average user who may have difficulties makes usage much easier for the average user too.

LarryDarrell 4y ago

I would love to see a similar paper by the Windows 11 design team. The 95 group seemed to be very responsive to how users were using or failing to use the OS. I've been on Win11 for a few months, and I'm confused who these changes are for. It could be that the Eternal September means things have to be dumbed down and locked down, catering to the least capable users. Or maybe design decisions are being made at a higher level for inscrutable business reasons. Either way, I'm feeling left behind. I think there's a tension between Desktop, Laptop and Tablet users that the Windows Team has decided to just ignore. Or they have decided that Desktop users are not important. I spent extra for a widescreen monitor that would give me more vertical pixels. What does Windows think I want to do with these pixels? Use them to display a big, honkin' new Taskbar, apparently. Why did they take away the option to make it thinner? Why is "Every user must have a Big Fat Taskbar" the hill they want to die on? And the modern-ish design language feels like it was designed to waste space and hide information. I have a huge screen, I don't want a 3+ click minimum to get to any setting. Third-party bloatware, permanent rounded corners for some reason, the take-it-or-I-dare-you-to-switch-to-Linux attitude does not give me warm fuzzy fealings. I would switch to linux, but I make my living with .Net/C#/WPF, so great job Microsoft, I feel trapped rather than valued. For now, I'm still able to cobble together the tools that make Windows a mostly-pleasant Desktop experience. I use Directory Opus, Open Shell (with ExplorerPatcher for Win11), Everything Search, and some registry edits to do things like bring the normal Context Menu back.

Sakos 4y ago
Some changes are really cool, but then marred by bizarre UX decisions that make absolutely zero sense to me and make things everything more tedious and difficult and I'm wondering how they're making these decisions. It's not being made by somebody who actually cares about Windows users.
mananaysiempre 4y ago
This is not exactly the document you’re asking for, but I think the clearest explanation of the origin of modern Microsoft flatness back in the Windows Phone 7 days is “How print design is the future of interaction” (2011) [1], by the late Mike Kruzeniski. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120314071640/http://kruzeniski.com/2011/how-print-design-is-the-future-of-interaction/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120314071640/http://kruzeniski..., seemingly missed by HN at the time in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301723 (6 points, 0 comments).

MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

I think windows 95/98 era was the peak of UI discoverability. As a kid, I and my friends could learn and explore how a program worked just by expanding all the menus and opening the various dialogs. Dialogs which were filled with fields and their descriptions! Before then, it was the world of DOS and you had to know what you were doing ahead of time. And now, UIs are dynamic, initially hiding stuff from the user and at worst provide zero indication of what functionality is available. I once used a phone app for months not knowing there was an extra screen you could open by sliding right on the main UI page. I only found it by accident one day, because there were no hints in the UI..

dec0dedab0de 4y ago
Many dos programs with a gui had all the same menus and fields before Windows. They just ran one at a time.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  I still believe that the file manager XTree for MS-DOS had the best user interface of any file manager that I have ever used, in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or MacOS, allowing one to perform any task with a minimum of key presses. It already had separate histories for each text field of the user interface, in which items could be made persistent. Even today, most programs with GUIs have much more poorly implemented histories, if they have them. Also for MS-DOS, the BRIEF editor for programmers used tiling windows and (optionally) a menu-driven interface that was better designed than that of most later text editors. It also allowed the redefinition of what happens when any key on the keyboard is pressed. The default action of inserting in the text the associated character could be replaced by an arbitrary script, which made easy the implementation of things like auto-completion or syntax coloring. Nevertheless, even if some important applications in Windows 95 were still regressions from the point of the user interface in comparison with what was available for MS-DOS, Windows 95 looked much nicer than anything using the standard VGA text modes and it was the version to which I have switched from MS-DOS. Even if I had previously tried Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11, those had felt too much like useless toys, in comparison with the professional programs that I was using under MS-DOS. The Windows 95 taskbar was definitely a very important improvement over Windows 3.x.

matsemann 4y ago

Too bad they didn't read these notes before gutting the taskbar in Win11. It's so unusable, so slow when you can't "ungroup" stuff. Made me actually reinstall and go back to Win10.

lucb1e 4y ago
Or the task bar grouping in Windows 7 that I've found most people actually don't prefer when you reveal that it's optional. A lot of people also like it, maybe as much as 40% or so, but when I look over someone's shoulder (who had been using 7 for ages already) and I wondered out loud how they manage to work with that task bar, they were usually happy to learn of a way to just see open programs instead of having this submenu structure plus a lot of unused task bar space, even if that meant getting used to a new way of working again. Or the joke of a start menu from Windows 8 that presumably Ballmer liked a lot. You even had to make some hidden gesture (swish and flick, professor flitwick would say) to get to the settings only to find the 'shut down' option. Windows 9x was a bit gray but otherwise mostly made sense. Windows 10 seems to have gone back to the state of things at 7, except now the settings are at 200% zoom/whitespace and all over the place and I've heard everyone from beginner to guru wonder where the heck they hid xyz. Windows 11 you've already covered. Precisely this sort of thing is why I wondered in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33776750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33776750) whether this type of testing happens anymore at all, or whether it is constrained in some way.
- frosted-flakes 4y ago
  > except now the settings are all over the place On Windows 11, it's very rare to have to use the old Control Panel. It still exists for some uncommon settings, but nearly everything has been moved to the new settings. And everything is actually intelligently grouped. I only wish you could have multiple Settings windows open at once.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    That's not really been my experience. I do agree about needing multiple settings windows opened at once, especially when one is already open and you need to open a seemingly unrelated screen and lose your place.

lstamour 4y ago

Note this is still on the internet at https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 The blog post is (2018) and the original article it republishes is (1996) according to Google. You can also find it on Archive.org at https://web.archive.org/web/20220504061157/https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 https://web.archive.org/web/20220504061157/https://dl.acm.or...

teddyh 4y ago

Again, weirdly, not a single word on how Windows 95 copied the title bar design and buttons from NeXTSTEP. See, for instance, here: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#full https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#full The “close window” (“×”) button is identical, and Windows 95 re-purposed NeXTSTEP’s “minimize” button into a “maximize” button. But you can still see why NeXTSTEP’s “minimize” button looks that way; it resembles a NeXTSTEP application icon, seen at the bottom on the above screenshot. Windows 95 did not, sadly, copy the very useful behavior of the “close window” button in NeXTSTEP: It changed shape if the contents of a window was not saved, as seen here: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#texteditor https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42#textedit...

hazelnut-tree 4y ago

I still think the biggest user interface (UI) change from Microsoft was the change from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. There were so many features and improvements e.g. the re-designed Open/Save dialog (not much changed since then). Later versions of Windows have never made the same leap between new versions of Windows. Sure, there are refined or tweaked features (or regressed!), but each new version of Windows felt like an incremental update from the previous version. I think the next leap in UI and visual design from Microsoft was...Windows Phone 8 (2012). It was a refreshing and different approach to mobile design. The visual language 'Metro' worked well on mobile touch screens. But Microsoft took the bad decision to transplant 'Metro' (flat design) to the desktop. The result is a clumsy, jumble of inconsistent screens. It simply doesn't work.

forgotmypw17 4y ago

I'm working on an Any Browser framework for making websites, and this means testing with IE 3.0 and up. After installing Word 97, I have found it such a pleasure to use that I've started doing a lot of my writing in it. From inside of a VM, it is still more responsive and accessible than most other things I have to use today.

butz 4y ago

It is sad, that nowadays they are just slapping everything on existing UI without much of a thought. And yet, even under several layers of "improvements" one still can find UIs from Windows 95 days, hardly changed.

kristopolous 4y ago

I've long suspected the start menu was intended to be on the top of the screen. In all other applications when you want to shut it down, it's the last option on the list. If you move the start menu to the top, then shutdown does indeed become the last on the list and the most common option, "Programs" becomes the closest by Fitts Law standards. Even in the Program Manager in Windows 3.1, the Run and Shutdown options were the same place but the menu was at the top. From the beginning (of public releases) in Windows 95 you could in fact move the start bar to the top. Having it on bottom was legally much cleaner, especially on the heels of 6-year saga of the classic Apple vs. Microsoft "look and feel" lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros.... Anyway, this is 100% speculative - there is a few builds with it on the top, such as Windows 95 build 90c https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_95_build_90c https://betawiki.net/wiki/Windows_95_build_90c but it starts on the bottom and quickly moves back there: https://betawiki.net/wiki/Category:Windows_95_builds https://betawiki.net/wiki/Category:Windows_95_builds But really, menu bar on the top, colorful rainbowish icon on the left, clock on the right, it's very System 7.5 (https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/System_7.5 https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/System_7.5) Reminds me of McDonaldland vs Sid & Marty Krofft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_%26_Marty_Krofft_Television_Productions_Inc._v._McDonald%27s_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_%26_Marty_Krofft_Televisio....), and I quote: "We do not believe that the ordinary reasonable person, let alone a child, viewing these works will even notice that Pufnstuf is wearing a cummerbund while Mayor McCheese is wearing a diplomat’s sash."

Kwpolska 4y ago
The next build after 90c had the task bar at the bottom. The start menu was redesigned a few times after that build (which is from early 1994). Why would Microsoft leave shut down in the wrong position? Why did it take them until XP to put the programs option closer to the bottom?
- kristopolous 4y ago
  I have no idea. It just seems unusual that the closest mouse distance is shut down. Fitt's Law, GOMS analysis and the human processor model were all the rage in the mid-90s. The ordering is pretty unusual but when you push the start menu to the top, all the rules are followed again. Again, pure speculation. I wasn't in the room and I've never been able to directly ask someone who was (although I'd go out of my way for the opportunity). As far as how it took them so long, I'd imagine moving things around on the start menu would require the signoff of an annoyingly large number of people. This is before the modern era of Unilateral UI Designer Autocrat who's given questionably broad authority over everything.

deleted 4y ago

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andrepd 4y ago

Wow! Imagine designing a user interface via careful, evidence- and feedback-driven development, as opposed to just doing what subjectively "looks good" to a sheltered SV """designer""" and shuffling it all every 6 months.

pjmlp 4y ago

They could give the Kent Sullivan documentation to the WinUI team.

richardfey 4y ago

Aww..how cute, when user interfaces were still designed for the users!

superkuh 4y ago

Windows 95/98/2k were the peak of "Open" and "Save As" dialogs. Some linux DE's managed parity in the mid-2000s but then removed features and introduced bugs again as mobile/convergence motivations took over in 2010+. Nowdays you can't even paste into a File->Open dialog in a gtk3 based desktop environment without triggering an error.

accrual 4y ago
Indeed. Some of those dialogs are still present in 10 depending on the application, but even the default dialog is pretty good. I like that it's basically just a "lite" Explorer window so I can copy/paste/rename/move/whatever all from within the dialog.

phusion 4y ago

I think I was 11 or 12 when I first installed Win95, once I got some help, it was like a whole new world. Multimedia was finally a real possibility. Seeing Weezer in their "Buddy Holly" music video on the disc was pretty wild, and the "Start Me Up" spoof song about win95 "this windows ninety fiiiiiive, it's suckin' up my driiiive". Good times.

msie 4y ago

I loved the windows 95 ui! Wished there was a way to go back to it (not through windowblinds). Pair it with NT and you have a winning combination.

xenadu02 4y ago

The modern paradigm seems to be "if we can't see it there is no problem". Just hide everything behind a hamburger menu, disclosure triangle, dropdown, or delete the feature entirely! Then the user won't be confused, they'll just assume the things we hid are impossible and thus not complain or ask questions.

guessbest 4y ago

I miss the Multiple-Document-Interface (MDI) application template. It was better in many respects to the tab based interface which overtook it.

bawolff 4y ago

> Our desire to abandon the waterfall model and opt for iterative design fortunately followed similar efforts in other areas of the company, so we had concrete examples of its benefits and feasibility. I think there is something really interesting about how even back in 1992 people were talking about the need to be more agile.

dusted 4y ago

This was such an interesting article.. Of course I was biased by growing up on C64, DOS and Win95.. But, it was really the case for me, I was able to learn all about the OS from just clicking around, and things seemed so strongly to be "in their place", much more so than Win 3.11 which I never liked. It also had a very fluid and gentle gradiant from functionality intended for everyday users to more advanced stuff, without making you feel overwhelmed and without hiding things too much away from you.. Just count how many clicks it takes to install the IPX protocol in Windows 95 vs Windows 10! (Also, good luck with that on 10!) It's also amazing how well it ran on the hardware at the time, 100 mhz and 16 mb ram was Just Fine. The entire OS could probably fit inside the space taken up by the windows 10 start menu I'm sure. I wish M$ would start trying to make a good user experience again, instead of trying to sell candy crush..