7 ms·

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 insta

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.)
worik 3y ago
Windows 3.1 for me
- codetrotter 3y ago
  Well. Someone had to say it :p
- Fatnino 3y ago
  If you double click in the top left corner of most windows they will close. Leftover behavior from 3.1
  - Narishma 3y ago
    No, it worked like that since the very first Windows version.
    - Fatnino 3y ago
      Fair, but after win3.1 there wasn't a menu up in that corner anymore.
      - CRConrad 3y ago
        > Fair, but after win3.1 there wasn't a menu up in that corner anymore. WTF are you on about?!? There still is! Source: Just clicked on the top-left icons on a few programs in Windows 10. Not guideline-defying shit like Microsoft Office / Outlook / Edge / Teams, of course, but programs that follow the Windows developer guidelines display the standard menu just like they've always done: Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize, Close (usually also displaying the shortcut key, [Alt-F4]). Notepad++ does, WinSCP does, 7-Zip does, PuTTY does, SAS client software does, Teradata client software does... Seems most built-in Windows utilities do, too: File Explorer does, Task Manager does, Command Prompt does, Notepad does, Paint does, Snipping Tool does... [Edit:] And even in Word / Excel / Edge / Outlook / Teams, at least that menu appears up in the top-left corner when you press the age-old shortcut [Alt]-[Space], even though there is no icon for it. (That was what the W3.x icon was supposed to depict, BTW: The space bar, not a hyphen or minus sign.) [/Edit] Seems you have to go out of your way to build a Windows app that doesn't have a system menu up in the top-left corner. (Start building a Windows application in most IDEs I've used, and unless you change the default settings it sure gets one automatically.) So why do you spout such drivel, when you obviously have no idea what you're talking about?
supportengineer 3y ago
After a few small tweaks, Windows 7 Professional was a cat. Purring in my lap cause it loves me.
- happymellon 3y ago
  > After a few small tweaks Hence why it was worse.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    But at least you could tweak it to make it reasonable.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  Windows 7 with the Classic theme was peak UI/UX, IMO. It's been downhill ever since.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    > Windows 7 with the Classic theme was peak UI/UX, IMO. Yup. Until some point midway through its lifetime, when they started disabling (at least some) detailed UI settings even via the Registry.
Varriount 3y ago
This is something that's always puzzled me - why is searching in Windows always so gosh darn slow? You'd think with an entire background service dedicated to file indexing, I'd be able to quickly find files in a directory tree with the word "foo" in their file name or contents, but even with a modern SSD it still takes at least a minute on any remotely populated directory.
- xtracto 3y ago
  File search in graphical Linux is terrible as well. Just the other day i was trying to do sone simple file search in Mint and oh god the GUI search function is completely useless. I had to jump around installing 3 "file search" programs, none of them really worked and at the end I settled with some console bash magic. ... its 2023 people.
  - anthk 3y ago
    With Linux the best option it's to use recoll to create a database and a GUI to search into your documents.
  - hulitu 3y ago
    Locate works great.
    - Jenda_ 3y ago
      Locate is for file names, not file contents.
      - deepspace 3y ago
        ripgrep for contents
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        ripgrep is fast for what it is. But indexes are faster.
rob74 3y ago
I was a fan of Google Desktop Search - that was actually able to find relevant content in my files, and it was fast. But Google killed it as soon as they decided to drive everyone into the cloud. Supposedly all major OSes have such an (indexed) search functionality integrated nowadays, but for some reason it doesn't really work, and I'm never motivated enough to find out how to fix it...
- anthk 3y ago
  Recoll it's close to Google Desktop Search.
- marczellm 3y ago
  I still have the installer lying around somewhere, do you need it? :)
- albert_e 3y ago
  May be they are so busy figuring out how to upload our data to their servers and sneak in clauses in their terms and conditions to cover it ... that they forgot to build the actual functionality of showing search results to user.
- fuzztester 3y ago
  Same with Google Talk (as in, was good, then killed by Google). This is their text chat and voice chat app before crapware like Hangouts. Not tried Duo or Meet.
mort96 3y ago
I won't argue against Windows 2000's usability. But I will say that to me, as someone who first started using computers in the XP era, any Windows earlier than Windows 7 looks so god damn ugly to me, and Windows 2000 even more so than XP. Interestingly though, I don't have the same impression when looking at the old Apple OSes. To me, Mac OS 9 looks old, but not ugly.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Pretty/ugly and usable are very different things. Sometimes they are in conflict, but mostly they are unrelated.
- MenhirMike 3y ago
  To me, XP and Vista looked like a terrible attempt at replicating Mac OS X when that all wow'ed us - it's hard to imagine these days just how big of a deal the iMac and later on OS X were in terms of moving away from grey boxes everywhere (though sometimes too far, since Windows 7 really toned down and refined XP/Vista's UI). For me, I grew up on Amiga Workbench 2.0 and MS-DOS, so Windows NT/2000 felt like a good evolution from it's User Interface. Very functional, for sure. 100% agree on Classic MacOS. As outdated as the tech was, it was beautiful because it was elegant without being distracting.
- deepspace 3y ago
  To the contrary, XP and Vista' soft, round buttons and edges always made me think of a Douglas-Adamsian dystopia. Win2000 was bare bones, square and functional.

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.)

worik 3y ago

Windows 3.1 for me

codetrotter 3y ago
Well. Someone had to say it :p
Fatnino 3y ago
If you double click in the top left corner of most windows they will close. Leftover behavior from 3.1
- Narishma 3y ago
  No, it worked like that since the very first Windows version.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    Fair, but after win3.1 there wasn't a menu up in that corner anymore.
    - CRConrad 3y ago
      > Fair, but after win3.1 there wasn't a menu up in that corner anymore. WTF are you on about?!? There still is! Source: Just clicked on the top-left icons on a few programs in Windows 10. Not guideline-defying shit like Microsoft Office / Outlook / Edge / Teams, of course, but programs that follow the Windows developer guidelines display the standard menu just like they've always done: Restore, Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize, Close (usually also displaying the shortcut key, [Alt-F4]). Notepad++ does, WinSCP does, 7-Zip does, PuTTY does, SAS client software does, Teradata client software does... Seems most built-in Windows utilities do, too: File Explorer does, Task Manager does, Command Prompt does, Notepad does, Paint does, Snipping Tool does... [Edit:] And even in Word / Excel / Edge / Outlook / Teams, at least that menu appears up in the top-left corner when you press the age-old shortcut [Alt]-[Space], even though there is no icon for it. (That was what the W3.x icon was supposed to depict, BTW: The space bar, not a hyphen or minus sign.) [/Edit] Seems you have to go out of your way to build a Windows app that doesn't have a system menu up in the top-left corner. (Start building a Windows application in most IDEs I've used, and unless you change the default settings it sure gets one automatically.) So why do you spout such drivel, when you obviously have no idea what you're talking about?

supportengineer 3y ago

After a few small tweaks, Windows 7 Professional was a cat. Purring in my lap cause it loves me.

happymellon 3y ago
> After a few small tweaks Hence why it was worse.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  But at least you could tweak it to make it reasonable.
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
Windows 7 with the Classic theme was peak UI/UX, IMO. It's been downhill ever since.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  > Windows 7 with the Classic theme was peak UI/UX, IMO. Yup. Until some point midway through its lifetime, when they started disabling (at least some) detailed UI settings even via the Registry.

Varriount 3y ago

This is something that's always puzzled me - why is searching in Windows always so gosh darn slow? You'd think with an entire background service dedicated to file indexing, I'd be able to quickly find files in a directory tree with the word "foo" in their file name or contents, but even with a modern SSD it still takes at least a minute on any remotely populated directory.

xtracto 3y ago
File search in graphical Linux is terrible as well. Just the other day i was trying to do sone simple file search in Mint and oh god the GUI search function is completely useless. I had to jump around installing 3 "file search" programs, none of them really worked and at the end I settled with some console bash magic. ... its 2023 people.
- anthk 3y ago
  With Linux the best option it's to use recoll to create a database and a GUI to search into your documents.
- hulitu 3y ago
  Locate works great.
  - Jenda_ 3y ago
    Locate is for file names, not file contents.
    - deepspace 3y ago
      ripgrep for contents
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        ripgrep is fast for what it is. But indexes are faster.

rob74 3y ago

I was a fan of Google Desktop Search - that was actually able to find relevant content in my files, and it was fast. But Google killed it as soon as they decided to drive everyone into the cloud. Supposedly all major OSes have such an (indexed) search functionality integrated nowadays, but for some reason it doesn't really work, and I'm never motivated enough to find out how to fix it...

anthk 3y ago
Recoll it's close to Google Desktop Search.
marczellm 3y ago
I still have the installer lying around somewhere, do you need it? :)
albert_e 3y ago
May be they are so busy figuring out how to upload our data to their servers and sneak in clauses in their terms and conditions to cover it ... that they forgot to build the actual functionality of showing search results to user.
fuzztester 3y ago
Same with Google Talk (as in, was good, then killed by Google). This is their text chat and voice chat app before crapware like Hangouts. Not tried Duo or Meet.

mort96 3y ago

I won't argue against Windows 2000's usability. But I will say that to me, as someone who first started using computers in the XP era, any Windows earlier than Windows 7 looks so god damn ugly to me, and Windows 2000 even more so than XP. Interestingly though, I don't have the same impression when looking at the old Apple OSes. To me, Mac OS 9 looks old, but not ugly.

bluGill 3y ago
Pretty/ugly and usable are very different things. Sometimes they are in conflict, but mostly they are unrelated.
MenhirMike 3y ago
To me, XP and Vista looked like a terrible attempt at replicating Mac OS X when that all wow'ed us - it's hard to imagine these days just how big of a deal the iMac and later on OS X were in terms of moving away from grey boxes everywhere (though sometimes too far, since Windows 7 really toned down and refined XP/Vista's UI). For me, I grew up on Amiga Workbench 2.0 and MS-DOS, so Windows NT/2000 felt like a good evolution from it's User Interface. Very functional, for sure. 100% agree on Classic MacOS. As outdated as the tech was, it was beautiful because it was elegant without being distracting.
deepspace 3y ago
To the contrary, XP and Vista' soft, round buttons and edges always made me think of a Douglas-Adamsian dystopia. Win2000 was bare bones, square and functional.