7 ms·
Show HN: Windows 7 GUI for the web
- nosioptar 1y agoThis is awesome. I love that the readme contains pictures of everything.
- gchamonlive 1y agoThese visual elements have to be protected by intellectual property somehow. Has Microsoft ever legally persecuted these types of projects before? Or projects built upon such libraries? I'd be wary to build on top of these clones only to receive a cease and desist, but that's a fear of mine, I don't know if it's founded.
- poly2it 1y agoIt can be more difficult to claim copyright over shapes and patterns than you think.
- flykespice 1y agoAnd somehow Tetris Company succeeded it..
- mschuster91 1y agoOnly for the original Tetrominos, and even there there are just so damn many Tetris clones and spin-offs... that battle is lost. Side note: the iOS version of Tetris is an ad and gambling ridden hellscape, and that's a licensed spinoff.
- xyst 1y agoI have a gallery of cease and desist orders. I would love to add MSFT to the list.
- xyst 1y agoAh yes the days of "aero ui". Sad to hear Apple designers are taking cues from _old_ windows designs now.
- joshuaissac 1y agoI wonder if this can be integrated with Electron and Tauri to provide native-looking user interfaces. Combined with a theme-to-CSS convertor, imagine an Electron app looking like a Windows app on Windows, and a GTK app on Linux, while following the colours and styles of the custom theme the user has selected in their OS.
- 90s_dev 1y agoThe reason I started hram.dev was so I could have a native platform to port 90s.dev to. I love the idea of having native host for retro GUIs. But I am not a huge fan of html/css/js combo. It feels tacked on because it is. I came up with a relatively novel and I think truly innovative GUI methodology in 90s.dev that I did not know how to explain so I haven't truly shared with people how exciting it potentially is. Tomorrow I plan to put up a github-sponsors link with a few different projects, where for each $50 that I receive for a given project, I will work two hours on that project. This way the community can help sponsor me turning these things into realities.
- skgough 1y agoI don't think you could 100% nail the Win7 glass or Win11 mica material without having transparency effects that have access to the compositor pipeline. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get close enough!
- jmchuster 1y ago> 7.css is a CSS framework for building interface components that look like Windows 7. It is built on top of the GUI backbone of XP.css, which is an extension of 98.css. Just an absolutely lovely line of text.
- threeducks 1y ago98.css: https://jdan.github.io/98.css/ https://jdan.github.io/98.css/ XP.css: https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/ https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/
- promiseofbeans 1y agoSort of mimics Windows itself - you famously have to do some archeology every time you want to change an important setting, and will work your way through many iterations of windows ui components as you do
- ayaros 1y agoYes, I thought this was beautiful too. Art imitates life, as they say.
- xcrunner529 1y agoSuper cool. Anyone know if a similar library exists for Aqua?
- dybber 1y agoThe checkboxes doesn’t look quite right on iOS
- khangnd 1y agoAdded an issue to address this: https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css/issues/124 https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css/issues/124
- kaltsturm 1y agoGreat work and idea! How can I use it without having tailwindcss changing all css?
- khangnd 1y agoDon't use tailwind
- malikNF 1y agoEvery time I see something about windows7 coming up, I feel a little sad. 7 imo was the last good windows ms came up with. I remember upgrading to it was something worth bragging to your friends in school. There was so much excitement around it. After 7, something felt, broken, new features felt unnecessary, things got more user hostile, the magic, it was just gone!
- wredcoll 1y agoOlder people feel exactly the same way about windows2000... or sometimes 98... or 3.1...
- leonnatus 1y agomore about xp than 2000
- bestham 1y agoFor me more about 2000 than XP. 2000 still felt like a Workstation OS and it was very responsive. XP themeing was the first thing I removed once I could not continue on 2000.
- therein 1y agoYeah, most people wouldn't say that about Win2000, but XP, definitely. XP Service Pack 2 was excellent.
- BrenBarn 1y agoI used all of those versions but I'd still agree that Win7 was the last good one. I still love the 95/98 aesthetic the most and it's what I try to replicate with my systems now, but the dropoff after Win7 is still much greater.
- saurik 1y agoI think the usual adage is that every other version of Windows is pretty good.
- 1y ago
- pknerd 1y agowhy nobody tries KDE or GNOME?
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoKDE and GNOME weren't as popular as Windows 7. Unless you mean porting Windows 7 to KDE as a theme?
- bilgi42 1y agothey also change theming too quickly sometimes. windows 7 is set, it's not going to change, ever
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoVery nice. Does anybody else find it a bit striking how gracefully this look has aged? With a little bit of tuning it could feel pretty modern. Modern UI design could stand to take not just a few pages but the majority of the book from both the Windows 7 variant of Aero and the OS X 10.9 variant of Aqua, in my opinion. Legibility, information density, and communication of interactability and widget function have all been lost as we’ve careened towards egregiously thick padding, low contrast, and low differentiation.
- flykespice 1y agoI concur, I think the successor flat design trend has nailed on reducing the styling visual clutter and keeping the user just focused on the "substance" from the app UI whilst keeping the UI itself minimal with no distractions.
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoThe problem is that minimalism and maximalism in UI design exist on a kind of horseshoe curve. Extremely maximalist UI is indeed distracting, but past a certain point of pruning so is minimalism, just in a different way. Instead of having your eyes drawn away from the content by flashy widgets, you’re poking and swiping to find the function you’re looking for, like someone feeling around trying to find the exit in a pitch dark room.
- jszymborski 1y agoI used Windows 7 in my formative years, so I'll always have a fond spot in my heart for it. That said, I really do think the Windows NT era had the best UI in terms of brute usability. Again, I love Aero's faux glass, cyan highlights, high gloss, etc... but it is indeed a lot of noise and I think it's a bit distracting.
- cosmic_cheese 1y agoThe 95-like look (of which I think the 2K variant is best) does have a bit of an edge in terms of usability, but it also looks considerably more dated. A similarly legible theme from that era that I think time has been more kind to is Platinum, the theme used by Mac OS from System 7.6.1 through Mac OS 9.2.1. Any new UI design looking to incorporate Aero’s good bits would be smart to tone the look down a little.
- hk1337 1y agoAnd used by phishers to make you think you got a Windows prompt.
- isomorphic- 1y agoUnfortunately some of the elements aren't compatible with DarkReader.
- 1718627440 1y agoThe last dialog looks crazily realistic. Is it possible to distinguish it from a real OS dialog without trying to move it? It looks awfully practical for phishing.
- Rebles 1y agoWhen I saw the last dialog box, my first thought was, is this toolbox's primary use for phishing?
- sdotdev 1y agoits crazy how good this library and Windows 7 in general looks even today. nice framework
- robertclaus 1y agoI wonder if the Microsoft "glass" look influenced the recent Apple work.
- T3RMINATED 1y ago[dead]
- natewww 1y agothis is pretty cool
- natewww 1y agothis is pretty cool, nice