8 ms·

SQLook – A free online SQLite database manager with a Windows 2000 interface

178 points by gringow 2y ago

josephcsible 2y ago
I'd be nervous about giving access to any nonpublic data to a closed-source app that only works while online.
- mahoro 2y ago
  I enabled "Offline mode", and it worked. But yes.
smitty1e 2y ago
The Clippy resurrection seemed gratuitous.
yuppiepuppie 2y ago
Just out of curiosity, does any one find these sorts of retro gui appealing in saas-y type software? I personally am turned off by it. Unless of course I’m missing the point and it’s supposed to be ironic.
- voidfunc 2y ago
  Love the retro look and feel for native apps but yea, it doesn't feel right for a SaaS app.
- godzillabrennus 2y ago
  I think it’s a sign the developer is trying too hard to be cool…
  - snozolli 2y ago
    God forbid someone has fun with the design of their own project.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Good UI design is appealing in any type of software.
- me_bx 2y ago
  Some benefits I appreciate: * All the text is at a readable size, and had sufficient contrast with the background. * The clickable and interactive elements are easy to identify. * Text is selectable and can be copied. * There are no useless animations(there only to give a dynamic feel without having any function).
a-dub 2y ago
fun fact: sqlite is only about 5.5 months younger than windows 2000...
int_19h 2y ago
That is not an accurate reproduction of the classic Windows UI. The 3D bevels on buttons and other beveled elements are wrong and make it look more like Motif if anything.
- theandrewbailey 2y ago
  They should have used 98.css, but with font-face: Tahoma. https://jdan.github.io/98.css/ https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
  - BrouteMinou 2y ago
    Wow, I initially thought that the first dialog box was a screencap of a "real" one... Impressive!
    - karamanolev 2y ago
      Pixel-aligned non-antialiased interfaces make it so much easier to reproduce. Good luck emulating current-gen desktop OS rendering on a different software and hardware stack...
      - hobobaggins 2y ago
        Easy to criticize, hard to actually build something.
    - prezjordan 2y ago
      Thank you :) A real labor of love [0] for me. [0]: https://notes.jordanscales.com/98-css-reflections https://notes.jordanscales.com/98-css-reflections
  - masklinn 2y ago
    Was the font really the only difference between 98 and 2k?
    - 2y ago
Retr0id 2y ago
The visualiser tool seems a little broken (nodes laid out in a long diagonal line, foreign key reference arrows floating around and not "attached")
zx8080 2y ago
Clippy is an office thing, not win2k.
- jumpkick 2y ago
  If I remember right, win2k had the dog. It would appear during Explorer search.
cbxyp 2y ago
Strange how people are always so negative. Always with the nitpicking. Functionally of course 90s style UX and desktop productivity has always been far higher. Palantir's blueprint UI doesn't even specifically target mobile.
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Yeah, seems many people can just moan online. At least I hope they aren't like this in daily life... It is pretty annoying how, while the HN audience grew steadily, from the 'wow great how you made this' went to 'this is crap and a joke' basically. Or maybe it's my memory and it was always quite bad, but then I don't really want to know; I find shooting down projects, unless they actually are super low effort (while asking money) or claiming blatant untruths (FOSS while it's not), is some kind of insecurity thing broken people do. Of course reporting bugs is a good thing, but that's not just burning down someone's efforts willy nilly.
bpiroman 2y ago
lol that's pretty cool!
snozolli 2y ago
I like it, and I laughed out loud when Clippy popped up. That bastard came out when my college ran everything from slow network drives. He'd bring the system to a grinding halt, unless you were on one of the few workstations with a local hard drive.
debarshri 2y ago
Looks like it is enterprise ready interface.
- yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
  Haha, true Finally, an interface that matches our enterprise COBOL codebase, perfect for Y2K-compliant enterprises of 1999 :-)
vekatimest 2y ago
Functional but looks nothing like Windows 2000 beyond the titlebar gradient. His name was also Clippit, never Clippy in any Office product (MS started calling him that after he was removed, since everyone else was getting it wrong)
nokun7 2y ago
I thought Windows 2000 was a typo.
- layer8 2y ago
  What could it possibly be a typo of?
  - nokun7 2y ago
    Something relatively modern. Wasn't Win2k a failed product?
    - n144q 2y ago
      Windows Me?
      - nokun7 2y ago
        I think so, Me was a failure. 2000 not so much.
    - layer8 2y ago
      My point is, I don't know of anything modern that is spelled sufficiently similar to "Windows 2000" for the latter to be a plausible typo of it. Windows 2000 was quite successful, and was the most reliable Windows version so far.
      - nokun7 2y ago
        You might have a point there. But honestly, it's so ancient that I had to do a double-take when I saw a UI inspired by Windows 2000.
hliyan 2y ago
The user experience is so (paradoxically) refreshing. Back then you could fit so much useful information and controls into a single screenful; interfaces responded instantly; it was easy to figure where things are and what I'm looking at. With "modern" UIs, you can't get a big picture of what you're working on because there is so much white space and scrolling; the application is slower than your fingers; with each application, you have to learn the designer's "vision" in order to figure out where things are and what you're looking at.
- ksvarma 2y ago
  Very well said, sometimes I feel the modern stack could re-learn and improve.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  > interfaces responded instantly I wish this nostalgic myth would die. Back in the Win 9x days we all had laughably slow spinning disks and hardly any RAM. Interfaces for simple programs like Minesweeper and Notepad were instant, sure. But anything heavy like Word, IE, Encarta, Visual Studio, etc. were definitely not. Most of those kinds of apps are way faster now than they were in the 90s, mostly thanks to SSDs. (Visual Studio is a notable exception - they really screwed it up after 6.0.)
  - daliz 2y ago
    > Most of those kinds of apps are way faster now than they were in the 90s I strongly disagree.
  - exe34 2y ago
    when you click save or when memory has to be paged/loaded, etc, yes. when it comes to responding to user input - while memory is being swapped, yes. in contrast, even when the computer wasn't responding, it never lost keystrokes. I'd type ahead and then the characters would appear when it was ready. now, the windows computer just randomly loses characters and loses focus for no reason. if it's not paying attention when you're typing or clicking, it just won't respond.
ksvarma 2y ago
Wow what a work, this is truly joy to go back in years. Great job.
thomastay 2y ago
I think it's pretty cool that the source code is all in a single file called app.js, and it's just doing simple DOM manipulations, no React, no minification, no libraries. I like to think it's just written like that too, a gigantic file that the author just iterates on.
- akpa1 2y ago
  It's incredibly refreshing to see that you can still build decently complex web apps without a huge swath of JS build tools
- GranPC 2y ago
  And that's the "magic" that makes it so snappy and fast to load. I built a web-based game just like that and I am confident that my choice not to use any of the "modern web dev stack" is the reason I managed to hit my 60 FPS performance target on an iPhone 6s in 2024.
  - hobobaggins 2y ago
    Show HN!
    - GranPC 2y ago
      I'd have loved to, but because of its nature as a live game show with cash prizes, it required that the user signs up with their phone number, as a way to make botting and multi-account a bit harder. I know that wouldn't go over well with the audience here. The game is no more, but maybe I could put together a little post talking about the more interesting problems I had to tackle, and showing the animations I am the most proud of. Maybe some day!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ralphbarendse 2y ago
  Thanks, and yes thats exactly how it happened. I just made it originally for myself and i like my own stuff to be fast. And then over the weekend i thought it could be nice to just publish it (with some win2000 theme over it)
self_awareness 2y ago
Is is still very far from a Windows 2000 interface. But it's still better than most of the websites.
checker659 2y ago
Oh man. Twinkle in the eyes.
FpUser 2y ago
I love it. It looks so clean and functional.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
gcr 2y ago
This reminds me a lot of Datasette.io. See example power plant data: https://global-power-plants.datasettes.com/global-power-plants/global-power-plants https://global-power-plants.datasettes.com/global-power-plan...
oliveirachan48 2y ago
[dead]
scoutforge 2y ago
That UI is... something else. Reminds me of some old database tools I used at Scout Forge, we even wrote some blog posts about similar ones. Think it's actually usable for anything beyond a quick peek?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ralphbarendse 2y ago
Hi all, i noticed the spike in internet traffic and saw its coming from here. Thanks for the compliments. As someone mentioned the visualiser was a bit buggy so i tried to fix it today. I also added a 'drag and drop' query builder. I am sorry if there is some mistakes here and there about the whole win2000 theme. It was just a weekend project and i always feel those database stuff should be as dusty as old windows..
areyourllySorry 2y ago
where did it go

178 points by gringow 2y ago

josephcsible 2y ago

I'd be nervous about giving access to any nonpublic data to a closed-source app that only works while online.

mahoro 2y ago
I enabled "Offline mode", and it worked. But yes.

smitty1e 2y ago

The Clippy resurrection seemed gratuitous.

yuppiepuppie 2y ago

Just out of curiosity, does any one find these sorts of retro gui appealing in saas-y type software? I personally am turned off by it. Unless of course I’m missing the point and it’s supposed to be ironic.

voidfunc 2y ago
Love the retro look and feel for native apps but yea, it doesn't feel right for a SaaS app.
godzillabrennus 2y ago
I think it’s a sign the developer is trying too hard to be cool…
- snozolli 2y ago
  God forbid someone has fun with the design of their own project.
Gormo 2y ago
Good UI design is appealing in any type of software.
me_bx 2y ago
Some benefits I appreciate: * All the text is at a readable size, and had sufficient contrast with the background. * The clickable and interactive elements are easy to identify. * Text is selectable and can be copied. * There are no useless animations(there only to give a dynamic feel without having any function).

a-dub 2y ago

fun fact: sqlite is only about 5.5 months younger than windows 2000...

int_19h 2y ago

That is not an accurate reproduction of the classic Windows UI. The 3D bevels on buttons and other beveled elements are wrong and make it look more like Motif if anything.

theandrewbailey 2y ago
They should have used 98.css, but with font-face: Tahoma. https://jdan.github.io/98.css/ https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
- BrouteMinou 2y ago
  Wow, I initially thought that the first dialog box was a screencap of a "real" one... Impressive!
  - karamanolev 2y ago
    Pixel-aligned non-antialiased interfaces make it so much easier to reproduce. Good luck emulating current-gen desktop OS rendering on a different software and hardware stack...
    - hobobaggins 2y ago
      Easy to criticize, hard to actually build something.
  - prezjordan 2y ago
    Thank you :) A real labor of love [0] for me. [0]: https://notes.jordanscales.com/98-css-reflections https://notes.jordanscales.com/98-css-reflections
- masklinn 2y ago
  Was the font really the only difference between 98 and 2k?
  - 2y ago

Retr0id 2y ago

The visualiser tool seems a little broken (nodes laid out in a long diagonal line, foreign key reference arrows floating around and not "attached")

zx8080 2y ago

Clippy is an office thing, not win2k.

jumpkick 2y ago
If I remember right, win2k had the dog. It would appear during Explorer search.

cbxyp 2y ago

Strange how people are always so negative. Always with the nitpicking. Functionally of course 90s style UX and desktop productivity has always been far higher. Palantir's blueprint UI doesn't even specifically target mobile.

anonzzzies 2y ago
Yeah, seems many people can just moan online. At least I hope they aren't like this in daily life... It is pretty annoying how, while the HN audience grew steadily, from the 'wow great how you made this' went to 'this is crap and a joke' basically. Or maybe it's my memory and it was always quite bad, but then I don't really want to know; I find shooting down projects, unless they actually are super low effort (while asking money) or claiming blatant untruths (FOSS while it's not), is some kind of insecurity thing broken people do. Of course reporting bugs is a good thing, but that's not just burning down someone's efforts willy nilly.

bpiroman 2y ago

lol that's pretty cool!

snozolli 2y ago

I like it, and I laughed out loud when Clippy popped up. That bastard came out when my college ran everything from slow network drives. He'd bring the system to a grinding halt, unless you were on one of the few workstations with a local hard drive.

debarshri 2y ago

Looks like it is enterprise ready interface.

yas_hmaheshwari 2y ago
Haha, true Finally, an interface that matches our enterprise COBOL codebase, perfect for Y2K-compliant enterprises of 1999 :-)

vekatimest 2y ago

Functional but looks nothing like Windows 2000 beyond the titlebar gradient. His name was also Clippit, never Clippy in any Office product (MS started calling him that after he was removed, since everyone else was getting it wrong)

nokun7 2y ago

I thought Windows 2000 was a typo.

layer8 2y ago
What could it possibly be a typo of?
- nokun7 2y ago
  Something relatively modern. Wasn't Win2k a failed product?
  - n144q 2y ago
    Windows Me?
    - nokun7 2y ago
      I think so, Me was a failure. 2000 not so much.
  - layer8 2y ago
    My point is, I don't know of anything modern that is spelled sufficiently similar to "Windows 2000" for the latter to be a plausible typo of it. Windows 2000 was quite successful, and was the most reliable Windows version so far.
    - nokun7 2y ago
      You might have a point there. But honestly, it's so ancient that I had to do a double-take when I saw a UI inspired by Windows 2000.

hliyan 2y ago

The user experience is so (paradoxically) refreshing. Back then you could fit so much useful information and controls into a single screenful; interfaces responded instantly; it was easy to figure where things are and what I'm looking at. With "modern" UIs, you can't get a big picture of what you're working on because there is so much white space and scrolling; the application is slower than your fingers; with each application, you have to learn the designer's "vision" in order to figure out where things are and what you're looking at.

ksvarma 2y ago
Very well said, sometimes I feel the modern stack could re-learn and improve.
IshKebab 2y ago
> interfaces responded instantly I wish this nostalgic myth would die. Back in the Win 9x days we all had laughably slow spinning disks and hardly any RAM. Interfaces for simple programs like Minesweeper and Notepad were instant, sure. But anything heavy like Word, IE, Encarta, Visual Studio, etc. were definitely not. Most of those kinds of apps are way faster now than they were in the 90s, mostly thanks to SSDs. (Visual Studio is a notable exception - they really screwed it up after 6.0.)
- daliz 2y ago
  > Most of those kinds of apps are way faster now than they were in the 90s I strongly disagree.
- exe34 2y ago
  when you click save or when memory has to be paged/loaded, etc, yes. when it comes to responding to user input - while memory is being swapped, yes. in contrast, even when the computer wasn't responding, it never lost keystrokes. I'd type ahead and then the characters would appear when it was ready. now, the windows computer just randomly loses characters and loses focus for no reason. if it's not paying attention when you're typing or clicking, it just won't respond.

ksvarma 2y ago

Wow what a work, this is truly joy to go back in years. Great job.

thomastay 2y ago

I think it's pretty cool that the source code is all in a single file called app.js, and it's just doing simple DOM manipulations, no React, no minification, no libraries. I like to think it's just written like that too, a gigantic file that the author just iterates on.

akpa1 2y ago
It's incredibly refreshing to see that you can still build decently complex web apps without a huge swath of JS build tools
GranPC 2y ago
And that's the "magic" that makes it so snappy and fast to load. I built a web-based game just like that and I am confident that my choice not to use any of the "modern web dev stack" is the reason I managed to hit my 60 FPS performance target on an iPhone 6s in 2024.
- hobobaggins 2y ago
  Show HN!
  - GranPC 2y ago
    I'd have loved to, but because of its nature as a live game show with cash prizes, it required that the user signs up with their phone number, as a way to make botting and multi-account a bit harder. I know that wouldn't go over well with the audience here. The game is no more, but maybe I could put together a little post talking about the more interesting problems I had to tackle, and showing the animations I am the most proud of. Maybe some day!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ralphbarendse 2y ago
Thanks, and yes thats exactly how it happened. I just made it originally for myself and i like my own stuff to be fast. And then over the weekend i thought it could be nice to just publish it (with some win2000 theme over it)

self_awareness 2y ago

Is is still very far from a Windows 2000 interface. But it's still better than most of the websites.

checker659 2y ago

Oh man. Twinkle in the eyes.

FpUser 2y ago

I love it. It looks so clean and functional.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

gcr 2y ago

This reminds me a lot of Datasette.io. See example power plant data: https://global-power-plants.datasettes.com/global-power-plants/global-power-plants https://global-power-plants.datasettes.com/global-power-plan...

oliveirachan48 2y ago

[dead]

scoutforge 2y ago

That UI is... something else. Reminds me of some old database tools I used at Scout Forge, we even wrote some blog posts about similar ones. Think it's actually usable for anything beyond a quick peek?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ralphbarendse 2y ago

Hi all, i noticed the spike in internet traffic and saw its coming from here. Thanks for the compliments. As someone mentioned the visualiser was a bit buggy so i tried to fix it today. I also added a 'drag and drop' query builder. I am sorry if there is some mistakes here and there about the whole win2000 theme. It was just a weekend project and i always feel those database stuff should be as dusty as old windows..

areyourllySorry 2y ago

where did it go