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I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the

I am coming to the opinion that Windows XP was the maximum usable interface, and we should have stopped there [0]. But then, I might just be old and telling the kids to get off my lawn. [0] this is definitely true for Windows. All subsequent versions of Windows have had worse UX.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jchw 3y ago
I absolutely agree. For at least 10 years now, my dream has been to essentially recreate the Windows 2000/XP UX as a Linux desktop environment. That said, doing so would basically require creating everything from the ground up, because merely theming some existing toolkit and window manager to look like XP is not at all the point. And frankly, there HAVE been SOME useful UI/UX improvements in the past couple decades, like, FTA, minimaps. But can you imagine a much more conservative desktop, with highly integrated apps, based on the "good old days" of desktop design with just a touch of modern elements when they improve on things? ... Truth told, the closest thing in existence is probably SerenityOS... but it really would be more practical if there was a Linux desktop for this. Every so often I fantasize about how I might start such a project. It's been like that forever now.
- cwillu 3y ago
  If you haven't already, look at xfce.
  - jchw 3y ago
    I did like XFCE at one point, but it never really did quite nail the UX for me. A lot of the problem is more on GTK+2 than it was anything else. (Obligatory mention of no thumbnails in file dialog; I used to patch GTK by hand for this!) Now with newer versions of GTK, this problem has unfortunately gotten worse for me, and I don't really prefer XFCE very much. Worseyet, I've gotten used to wlroots giving me good support for things that never really worked well in X11, and XFCE's plan regarding X11 and Wayland going into the future is still somewhat unclear. I also tried LXDE and LXQt as well. I actually thought LXQt might be the one for me, but it was a bit buggy and lacked a lot of much-needed maintenance. Also, although I'm glad Linux developers don't always make a habit of just simply throwing out ideas and code that works fine, it does bother me how antiquated some things have gotten. DBus is the best desktop IPC option on Linux, and that's not really a great thing in my opinion. Likewise, it sucks that most file archivers still work by popening some command and parsing its output, occasionally breaking on edge cases, usually having limited support for the kinds of advanced functionality you'd get in Windows archive tools. I do understand that making actually-good applications takes time, but over the course of the past couple decades it doesn't feel like much progress has been made here. I mean hell, speaking of archive tools... FreeBSD has been working on libarchive for ages and it'll likely be integrated with fucking Windows before it's integrated with common Linux desktops, which will probably mostly farm out to CLI tools like unar and zip directly. This is the same approach, with the same exact problems, that I remember being used as far back as when I started using Linux, in programs like Xfe. Needless to say... my feelings are complicated.
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    using KDE Plasma, which isn't bad, and is configurable enough :)
- jwrallie 3y ago
  I believe the biggest obstacle is dealing with different toolkits, since gtk3 and later are constantly breaking theme compatibility with new versions, and nobody have the time to maintain good alternative themes in these conditions. XFCE with Chicago95 already exists (and so does Q4OS with XPQ4) as proof of concept that the window manager and toolbar side can be replicated. The problem is that important pieces of software are not relying on any toolkit directly, but implementing their own version, so even if you support qt, gtk2 and gtk3+ applications with 3 different themes, there will be software running under electron or implementing their own client side decorations and breaking all the rules. I think the easiest way to start would be to simply collect and maintain existing themes with a unified look and make a distro based on Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL to avoid breaking changes at maximum. This distro would have pre-selected software that behaves well with the selected themes, and need to have at absolute minimum a working browser with extensions following that theme. If implementing from the bottom up, then something similar to helloSystem could also be a way, but I do not see it working in practice due to the time it would take.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    You can find well maintained applications for almost everything in either qt or gtk3. So you can select one toolkit to support. KDE might even accept your theme if you did enough work on it to make it work - and this is something that is feasible for one person. The hard part is those few exceptions, if you need one GTK3 app because KDE doesn't have a good alternative (or one qt app because GTK3 doesn't) then you have twice as much work and it is probably beyond what one person can do. Making that missing app for qt/gtk3 probably needs a large team and a few years and so is beyond you (unless you are rich and can afford to hire someone to fulfill your vision) - and there are many missing applications, not to mention existing ones which are just barely acceptable
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      Most maintained GTK 3 apps replaced menu bars with hamburger menus.
- gnyman 3y ago
  Have you looked at Q4OS with the windows theme pack? https://q4os.org/ https://q4os.org/ and https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ It's does not seem well known but it looks and works very closely to old Windows. I have a side project plan to take this, combine it with a decent laptop, pre install libreoffice and a browser and sell it as "Stable OS" with a long term "no-change" policy to anyone who just needs a basic computer where not everything changes at the whim of someone looking for a item on their resume.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
MenhirMike 3y ago
Windows 2000 was the last truly great Windows for me. It was the last Windows version that had a working "Find in File Contents" feature without having to install grepwin.
- l0b0 3y ago
  Recursive agree to all the above, purely in terms of UI/UX. Firefox currently has about 20x20 pixels next to the tabs to grab and move the window, and "always show scrollbars" is off by default. This would be reasonable on a phone, but not on any kind of machine with a mouse.
  - bonton89 3y ago
    Can you not right click and enable menu bar to get the traditional menu (plus a title bar of sorts) back for this? I'm not really defending firefox UI to strongly here, I use it every day as my browser of choice and I find the defaults wonky but at least customizable.
    - hulitu 3y ago
      Firefox is also highjacking the title bar.
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars#w_turn-on-the-title-bar-menu-bar-or-bookmarks-toolbar https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...
    - CRConrad 3y ago
      > Can you not right click and enable menu bar to get the traditional menu FF has a great compromise setting, keeps the menu bar hidden by default but it appears when you press (the CUA standard keys) [Alt] or [F10]. (At least on Windows, that is.)
- 3y ago
lstamour 3y ago
Everything old is new again? I remember when people were deriding Windows XP for being "Fisher-Price" in appearance and preferring to run Windows 2000 because it was more stable (until roughly SP2 came out, which basically was an entirely new OS released as a service pack). Windows 7, which was Vista's equivalent to SP2 also has some fans. Heck, I'd even personally argue that Windows ME has some niceties not seen in subsequent releases, particularly when combined with Active Desktop (which I'm pretty sure did not survive the transition to XP). I wonder if/when some subset of users will prefer a more controlled window layout engine, one which always opens windows into their own "space" on the screen. To that end, I don't actually mind how iPad does its window layout, I just wish iPad had all the features and openness of macOS to install your own drivers, background apps and virtual devices/mixing. A simpler UI can actually be a good thing, but you shouldn't lose functionality when making things simpler. A simpler UI doesn't necessarily mean less complex operating system...
- addicted 3y ago
  > until roughly SP2 came out, which basically was an entirely new OS released as a service pack SP2 was fantastic. For me personally, Windows XP means XP SP2. Anything before that wasn’t worth using.
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    Yes. XP == SP2 :)
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > For me personally, Windows XP means XP SP2. Anything before that wasn’t worth using. That is because Microsoft had its own versioning system: - RC was alpha quality. - Releases were betas. and then starting with SP2 one can talk about a released product. NT had 6 SPs, 2000 had 4, XP had 2. Even in Windows 11 they fixed things (taskbar) after release. This really tells a not so nice story about engineering and quality at Microsoft.
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
addicted 3y ago
I thought Windows 7 was pretty good. Vista eliminated the Fisher Priceness of XP but added a whole bunch of glowing and reflective stuff, which Windows 7 toned down dramatically. I don’t remember if Win 7 still allowed you to have the classic start menu, but I do believe I was ok with what it did have.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  there's a great add-on called... ClassicShell http://classicshell.net/ http://classicshell.net/ I stopped using windows after Using Win10 for a short time, but ClassicShell was always maintained and worked flawlessly... oh, dev stopped in 2017. oh well. the source was released and there is a fork that has recent changes https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  There are more things than graphics : the ability to search the start menu was a huge improvement in Win7 (or was that Vista ?) It's Windows 8 that wrecked things, by making the two-way correspondence between the start menu and a folder of icons basically void.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Of all the versions of the Windows UI, Win 7 was -- for me -- the best by far. Nothing else even comes close, and everything from Win 8 on has been substantially worse.
jeffparsons 3y ago
I might be getting old, too. (Born 1987.) I have also come to regard Windows XP as the pinnacle of personal computing UI. Almost everything that followed, regardless of vendor, feels like a step in the wrong direction.
- tetris11 3y ago
  Same, and same. It was pretty optimal too, where i remember getting the number of BG tasks down to 15 and I knew what each every one did. I haven't been able to make that claim for an OS for many many years now.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  > I might be getting old, too. (Born 1987.) Muahaha... Heh. Please don't say stuff stuff like that, kid. Because if you are "old", then... What are many of the rest of us, antique?
TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
Win95 default was peak Windows UI for me. It had proper shading so you can see the window edges. Min/max/close buttons were high contrast and easy to see, and were big enough to easily click. Window titles were high contrast and clear. The UI was light and snappy unlike XP’s.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  What was worse in Windows 98? Or Windows 2000?
  - forgotmypw17 3y ago
    Active Desktop and IE Windows Explorer, for one thing. But also, generally, the difference is that Windows 95 still feels like a "workstation" computer, designed for maximum readability and clarity, while staying in the background and not drawing any attention to itself. With Windows 98, the OS begins trying to look pretty, which means having more elements and style choices which take attention away from the work.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      You could turn off Active Desktop and IE Windows Explorer? And what in Windows 98 or Windows 2000 took attention away from the work?
      - forgotmypw17 3y ago
        It can be turned off, but it can't be turned off. It's still there, lurking just around the corner, and still showing up in some dialogs. And I think this is exactly what many people's complaints are in this thread: an interface that is faulty out of the box that needs to be "tuned" in order to change it from an entertainer back into a workstation. I haven't played with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 in a while, but I remember all sorts of "improvements" over Windows 95, such as sliding menus, "shiny" icons that draw attention to themselves, "shiny" gradient title bars, and so on.
Clamchop 3y ago
I'd tack a few more features onto it, like multiple desktops, and give it a small face-lift to make it just a wee less ugly. But yeah.
pseudalopex 3y ago
Windows XP couldn't search the start menu.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  I didn't say it was perfect ;) Just better than everything that came after it
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    You said we should have stopped there.
    - marcus_holmes 3y ago
      Yes. Because XP with no ability to search the start menu is better than everything that came after it. That doesn't mean that XP was perfect. There are still faults with it. But if fixing those faults means iterating on it more, then I'm happy with not. Things can be imperfect and still better than everything else. Does that make sense?
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  That's why Launchy exists: http://www.launchy.net/ http://www.launchy.net/ Incidentally, I still use it in Windows 10. Probably more out of habit than anything else.
  - t_mahmood 3y ago
    Oh! Blast from the past! I loved this app, when I was a Windows user. The workflow is still with me, in a gnome extension.
  - johnnyworker 3y ago
    https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/ https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/ I use it because it rocks more than anything else :)
bandrami 3y ago
Same time frame: GNUStep/Windowmaker on the Linux side of things, also something of a high water mark. It's really weird to me how much interfaces have degraded in the past two decades.
robomartin 3y ago
I thought Silicon Graphics Irix was pretty nice back in the day. I used to work with Onyx and Onyx 2 machines. Amazing hardware at the time.
chankstein38 3y ago
I swear they actually are actively trying to make the "Control Panel" / system settings experience worse with each iteration for sure. 90% of 10 and 11's system settings feel like they just took the original Control Panel screen and hid it, exposed 2-3 of the least valuable options, and displayed them in a weird solid-colored screen. To me the only way to adjust most windows settings is to find the "Advanced settings" link in the solid-colored window that will bring up the original control panels.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  Put a shortcut to C:\Windows\System32\control.exe or C:\Windows\SysWOW64\control.exe into your Start menu. HTH!
zamadatix 3y ago
I'd love the windows 2000 style classic theme with the overall customizability improvements in XP with the UI feature sets of newer versions. E.g. booting up 2000 by itself it absolutely sucks. I mean, it looks great... but you can't tile windows, you can't resize the command prompt dynamically, you don't have DPI support, a lot of the little victories like pinning and grouping aren't there, the way it draws often causes ghost trails, virtual desktops aren't a thing, a surprising number of things were modal when they didn't need to be. It has great parts but the problem isn't newer versions threw them all away with no improvement it's that not every change was an improvement.
quantified 3y ago
I'd go with Win 7. Mac is all secret handshakes, nothing discoverable, terrible af keyboard-primary work. Windows was very good at letting you stay on the keyboard. In the spirit of scroll bar discussion, the standard of Ctrl-Home, Crtl-End, Shift-Ctrl-Home and Shift-Ctrl-End are so good. No such "begin of doc" and "end of doc" on a Mac except if an app wills it.
- cmiller1 3y ago
  Cmd up or down arrow
  - quantified 3y ago
    Ok, except for default intellij key bindings, that works. Thank you.
GuB-42 3y ago
I'd go up to Windows 7. From Windows 95 to Windows 7, the UI fundamentally stayed the same, with a few details here and there, including, scroll bars, window title bars and borders. Essentially, what changed is just cosmetic and mostly as a result of better hardware. Earlier versions of Windows were designed for 256 color displays, Windows XP fully embraced 24-bit color, and Windows 7 was designed with GPUs in mind. That's how we got from pixel art to shading to semi-transparency. And I must admit I liked Windows 7 because it was both functional and pretty. A nice, modern for the time skin on top of tried and tested UI core concepts. Windows 8 broke everything as an attempt to unify the desktop and mobile experience, and we haven't recovered since then. In fact, I think mobile killed desktop usability. We are in a conundrum that we didn't find a way to resolve: desktop and mobile are fundamentally different platforms, so they would need different UI paradigms, but there is an overlap functionality as many apps are present on both platforms, so it would be nice to provide the same experience on both. To that, add the fact that the web is often third or a fourth option (mobile and desktop web), and the ability to use native controls in web browsers is rather poor, so people make their own, but then, you want the website to look like the desktop app. Same kind of problem.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jchw 3y ago

I absolutely agree. For at least 10 years now, my dream has been to essentially recreate the Windows 2000/XP UX as a Linux desktop environment. That said, doing so would basically require creating everything from the ground up, because merely theming some existing toolkit and window manager to look like XP is not at all the point. And frankly, there HAVE been SOME useful UI/UX improvements in the past couple decades, like, FTA, minimaps. But can you imagine a much more conservative desktop, with highly integrated apps, based on the "good old days" of desktop design with just a touch of modern elements when they improve on things? ... Truth told, the closest thing in existence is probably SerenityOS... but it really would be more practical if there was a Linux desktop for this. Every so often I fantasize about how I might start such a project. It's been like that forever now.

cwillu 3y ago
If you haven't already, look at xfce.
- jchw 3y ago
  I did like XFCE at one point, but it never really did quite nail the UX for me. A lot of the problem is more on GTK+2 than it was anything else. (Obligatory mention of no thumbnails in file dialog; I used to patch GTK by hand for this!) Now with newer versions of GTK, this problem has unfortunately gotten worse for me, and I don't really prefer XFCE very much. Worseyet, I've gotten used to wlroots giving me good support for things that never really worked well in X11, and XFCE's plan regarding X11 and Wayland going into the future is still somewhat unclear. I also tried LXDE and LXQt as well. I actually thought LXQt might be the one for me, but it was a bit buggy and lacked a lot of much-needed maintenance. Also, although I'm glad Linux developers don't always make a habit of just simply throwing out ideas and code that works fine, it does bother me how antiquated some things have gotten. DBus is the best desktop IPC option on Linux, and that's not really a great thing in my opinion. Likewise, it sucks that most file archivers still work by popening some command and parsing its output, occasionally breaking on edge cases, usually having limited support for the kinds of advanced functionality you'd get in Windows archive tools. I do understand that making actually-good applications takes time, but over the course of the past couple decades it doesn't feel like much progress has been made here. I mean hell, speaking of archive tools... FreeBSD has been working on libarchive for ages and it'll likely be integrated with fucking Windows before it's integrated with common Linux desktops, which will probably mostly farm out to CLI tools like unar and zip directly. This is the same approach, with the same exact problems, that I remember being used as far back as when I started using Linux, in programs like Xfe. Needless to say... my feelings are complicated.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  using KDE Plasma, which isn't bad, and is configurable enough :)
jwrallie 3y ago
I believe the biggest obstacle is dealing with different toolkits, since gtk3 and later are constantly breaking theme compatibility with new versions, and nobody have the time to maintain good alternative themes in these conditions. XFCE with Chicago95 already exists (and so does Q4OS with XPQ4) as proof of concept that the window manager and toolbar side can be replicated. The problem is that important pieces of software are not relying on any toolkit directly, but implementing their own version, so even if you support qt, gtk2 and gtk3+ applications with 3 different themes, there will be software running under electron or implementing their own client side decorations and breaking all the rules. I think the easiest way to start would be to simply collect and maintain existing themes with a unified look and make a distro based on Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL to avoid breaking changes at maximum. This distro would have pre-selected software that behaves well with the selected themes, and need to have at absolute minimum a working browser with extensions following that theme. If implementing from the bottom up, then something similar to helloSystem could also be a way, but I do not see it working in practice due to the time it would take.
- bluGill 3y ago
  You can find well maintained applications for almost everything in either qt or gtk3. So you can select one toolkit to support. KDE might even accept your theme if you did enough work on it to make it work - and this is something that is feasible for one person. The hard part is those few exceptions, if you need one GTK3 app because KDE doesn't have a good alternative (or one qt app because GTK3 doesn't) then you have twice as much work and it is probably beyond what one person can do. Making that missing app for qt/gtk3 probably needs a large team and a few years and so is beyond you (unless you are rich and can afford to hire someone to fulfill your vision) - and there are many missing applications, not to mention existing ones which are just barely acceptable
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Most maintained GTK 3 apps replaced menu bars with hamburger menus.
gnyman 3y ago
Have you looked at Q4OS with the windows theme pack? https://q4os.org/ https://q4os.org/ and https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ https://xpq4.sourceforge.io/ It's does not seem well known but it looks and works very closely to old Windows. I have a side project plan to take this, combine it with a decent laptop, pre install libreoffice and a browser and sell it as "Stable OS" with a long term "no-change" policy to anyone who just needs a basic computer where not everything changes at the whim of someone looking for a item on their resume.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

MenhirMike 3y ago

Windows 2000 was the last truly great Windows for me. It was the last Windows version that had a working "Find in File Contents" feature without having to install grepwin.

l0b0 3y ago
Recursive agree to all the above, purely in terms of UI/UX. Firefox currently has about 20x20 pixels next to the tabs to grab and move the window, and "always show scrollbars" is off by default. This would be reasonable on a phone, but not on any kind of machine with a mouse.
- bonton89 3y ago
  Can you not right click and enable menu bar to get the traditional menu (plus a title bar of sorts) back for this? I'm not really defending firefox UI to strongly here, I use it every day as my browser of choice and I find the defaults wonky but at least customizable.
  - hulitu 3y ago
    Firefox is also highjacking the title bar.
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-controls-buttons-and-toolbars#w_turn-on-the-title-bar-menu-bar-or-bookmarks-toolbar https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    > Can you not right click and enable menu bar to get the traditional menu FF has a great compromise setting, keeps the menu bar hidden by default but it appears when you press (the CUA standard keys) [Alt] or [F10]. (At least on Windows, that is.)
3y ago

lstamour 3y ago

Everything old is new again? I remember when people were deriding Windows XP for being "Fisher-Price" in appearance and preferring to run Windows 2000 because it was more stable (until roughly SP2 came out, which basically was an entirely new OS released as a service pack). Windows 7, which was Vista's equivalent to SP2 also has some fans. Heck, I'd even personally argue that Windows ME has some niceties not seen in subsequent releases, particularly when combined with Active Desktop (which I'm pretty sure did not survive the transition to XP). I wonder if/when some subset of users will prefer a more controlled window layout engine, one which always opens windows into their own "space" on the screen. To that end, I don't actually mind how iPad does its window layout, I just wish iPad had all the features and openness of macOS to install your own drivers, background apps and virtual devices/mixing. A simpler UI can actually be a good thing, but you shouldn't lose functionality when making things simpler. A simpler UI doesn't necessarily mean less complex operating system...

addicted 3y ago
> until roughly SP2 came out, which basically was an entirely new OS released as a service pack SP2 was fantastic. For me personally, Windows XP means XP SP2. Anything before that wasn’t worth using.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  Yes. XP == SP2 :)
- hulitu 3y ago
  > For me personally, Windows XP means XP SP2. Anything before that wasn’t worth using. That is because Microsoft had its own versioning system: - RC was alpha quality. - Releases were betas. and then starting with SP2 one can talk about a released product. NT had 6 SPs, 2000 had 4, XP had 2. Even in Windows 11 they fixed things (taskbar) after release. This really tells a not so nice story about engineering and quality at Microsoft.
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago

addicted 3y ago

I thought Windows 7 was pretty good. Vista eliminated the Fisher Priceness of XP but added a whole bunch of glowing and reflective stuff, which Windows 7 toned down dramatically. I don’t remember if Win 7 still allowed you to have the classic start menu, but I do believe I was ok with what it did have.

fsckboy 3y ago
there's a great add-on called... ClassicShell http://classicshell.net/ http://classicshell.net/ I stopped using windows after Using Win10 for a short time, but ClassicShell was always maintained and worked flawlessly... oh, dev stopped in 2017. oh well. the source was released and there is a fork that has recent changes https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
BlueTemplar 3y ago
There are more things than graphics : the ability to search the start menu was a huge improvement in Win7 (or was that Vista ?) It's Windows 8 that wrecked things, by making the two-way correspondence between the start menu and a folder of icons basically void.
JohnFen 3y ago
Of all the versions of the Windows UI, Win 7 was -- for me -- the best by far. Nothing else even comes close, and everything from Win 8 on has been substantially worse.

jeffparsons 3y ago

I might be getting old, too. (Born 1987.) I have also come to regard Windows XP as the pinnacle of personal computing UI. Almost everything that followed, regardless of vendor, feels like a step in the wrong direction.

tetris11 3y ago
Same, and same. It was pretty optimal too, where i remember getting the number of BG tasks down to 15 and I knew what each every one did. I haven't been able to make that claim for an OS for many many years now.
CRConrad 3y ago
> I might be getting old, too. (Born 1987.) Muahaha... Heh. Please don't say stuff stuff like that, kid. Because if you are "old", then... What are many of the rest of us, antique?

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago

Win95 default was peak Windows UI for me. It had proper shading so you can see the window edges. Min/max/close buttons were high contrast and easy to see, and were big enough to easily click. Window titles were high contrast and clear. The UI was light and snappy unlike XP’s.

pseudalopex 3y ago
What was worse in Windows 98? Or Windows 2000?
- forgotmypw17 3y ago
  Active Desktop and IE Windows Explorer, for one thing. But also, generally, the difference is that Windows 95 still feels like a "workstation" computer, designed for maximum readability and clarity, while staying in the background and not drawing any attention to itself. With Windows 98, the OS begins trying to look pretty, which means having more elements and style choices which take attention away from the work.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    You could turn off Active Desktop and IE Windows Explorer? And what in Windows 98 or Windows 2000 took attention away from the work?
    - forgotmypw17 3y ago
      It can be turned off, but it can't be turned off. It's still there, lurking just around the corner, and still showing up in some dialogs. And I think this is exactly what many people's complaints are in this thread: an interface that is faulty out of the box that needs to be "tuned" in order to change it from an entertainer back into a workstation. I haven't played with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 in a while, but I remember all sorts of "improvements" over Windows 95, such as sliding menus, "shiny" icons that draw attention to themselves, "shiny" gradient title bars, and so on.

Clamchop 3y ago

I'd tack a few more features onto it, like multiple desktops, and give it a small face-lift to make it just a wee less ugly. But yeah.

pseudalopex 3y ago

Windows XP couldn't search the start menu.

marcus_holmes 3y ago
I didn't say it was perfect ;) Just better than everything that came after it
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  You said we should have stopped there.
  - marcus_holmes 3y ago
    Yes. Because XP with no ability to search the start menu is better than everything that came after it. That doesn't mean that XP was perfect. There are still faults with it. But if fixing those faults means iterating on it more, then I'm happy with not. Things can be imperfect and still better than everything else. Does that make sense?
AlexandrB 3y ago
That's why Launchy exists: http://www.launchy.net/ http://www.launchy.net/ Incidentally, I still use it in Windows 10. Probably more out of habit than anything else.
- t_mahmood 3y ago
  Oh! Blast from the past! I loved this app, when I was a Windows user. The workflow is still with me, in a gnome extension.
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/ https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/ I use it because it rocks more than anything else :)

bandrami 3y ago

Same time frame: GNUStep/Windowmaker on the Linux side of things, also something of a high water mark. It's really weird to me how much interfaces have degraded in the past two decades.

robomartin 3y ago

I thought Silicon Graphics Irix was pretty nice back in the day. I used to work with Onyx and Onyx 2 machines. Amazing hardware at the time.

chankstein38 3y ago

I swear they actually are actively trying to make the "Control Panel" / system settings experience worse with each iteration for sure. 90% of 10 and 11's system settings feel like they just took the original Control Panel screen and hid it, exposed 2-3 of the least valuable options, and displayed them in a weird solid-colored screen. To me the only way to adjust most windows settings is to find the "Advanced settings" link in the solid-colored window that will bring up the original control panels.

CRConrad 3y ago
Put a shortcut to C:\Windows\System32\control.exe or C:\Windows\SysWOW64\control.exe into your Start menu. HTH!

zamadatix 3y ago

I'd love the windows 2000 style classic theme with the overall customizability improvements in XP with the UI feature sets of newer versions. E.g. booting up 2000 by itself it absolutely sucks. I mean, it looks great... but you can't tile windows, you can't resize the command prompt dynamically, you don't have DPI support, a lot of the little victories like pinning and grouping aren't there, the way it draws often causes ghost trails, virtual desktops aren't a thing, a surprising number of things were modal when they didn't need to be. It has great parts but the problem isn't newer versions threw them all away with no improvement it's that not every change was an improvement.

quantified 3y ago

I'd go with Win 7. Mac is all secret handshakes, nothing discoverable, terrible af keyboard-primary work. Windows was very good at letting you stay on the keyboard. In the spirit of scroll bar discussion, the standard of Ctrl-Home, Crtl-End, Shift-Ctrl-Home and Shift-Ctrl-End are so good. No such "begin of doc" and "end of doc" on a Mac except if an app wills it.

cmiller1 3y ago
Cmd up or down arrow
- quantified 3y ago
  Ok, except for default intellij key bindings, that works. Thank you.

GuB-42 3y ago

I'd go up to Windows 7. From Windows 95 to Windows 7, the UI fundamentally stayed the same, with a few details here and there, including, scroll bars, window title bars and borders. Essentially, what changed is just cosmetic and mostly as a result of better hardware. Earlier versions of Windows were designed for 256 color displays, Windows XP fully embraced 24-bit color, and Windows 7 was designed with GPUs in mind. That's how we got from pixel art to shading to semi-transparency. And I must admit I liked Windows 7 because it was both functional and pretty. A nice, modern for the time skin on top of tried and tested UI core concepts. Windows 8 broke everything as an attempt to unify the desktop and mobile experience, and we haven't recovered since then. In fact, I think mobile killed desktop usability. We are in a conundrum that we didn't find a way to resolve: desktop and mobile are fundamentally different platforms, so they would need different UI paradigms, but there is an overlap functionality as many apps are present on both platforms, so it would be nice to provide the same experience on both. To that, add the fact that the web is often third or a fourth option (mobile and desktop web), and the ability to use native controls in web browsers is rather poor, so people make their own, but then, you want the website to look like the desktop app. Same kind of problem.