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The Dock was an evolution of the applets that had originated in NeXTSTEP several years before Windows 95’s UI team iterated the “system tray” into the taskbar t
by dcrazy 2y ago
The Dock was an evolution of the applets that had originated in NeXTSTEP several years before Windows 95’s UI team iterated the “system tray” into the taskbar that actually shipped.
- qingcharles 2y agoAnd I guess Windows 95 was sorta building on the fact you could stack your open windows at the bottom of the screen in Windows 3.x. The early versions of 95 I was running still had the 3.x look to the taskbar/dock: http://toastytech.com/guis/chic58.html http://toastytech.com/guis/chic58.html
- dcrazy 2y agoAs the author notes, Windows 95 was remarkable for the iterative process that Microsoft’s UI folks undertook. They published an article in the ACM [1] on how they completely discarded the previous approach of designing from first principles in a vacuum in favor of rapid iteration and frequent usability testing. This let them abandon their fear of changing too much—in fact, the article directly addresses the evolution of taskbar icons from the version shown in your linked screenshots to what eventually shipped. [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611 https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611
- leoc 2y agoThat's not too dissimilar to the folder tabs which appeared at some point in classic MacOS, though I don't remember when: quite possibly after '95.
- kergonath 2y agoIIRC that was with MacOS 8, which was in 1997.