[HN Gopher] 98.css - design system for building faithful recreat... ___________________________________________________________________ 98.css - design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs Author : metadat Score : 120 points Date : 2022-10-23 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (jdan.github.io) (TXT) w3m dump (jdan.github.io) | alberth wrote: | I give this a "10" on the UI usability scorecard. | clnq wrote: | The UIs around the year 2001 was fantastically accessible. The | recent obsession with flatness undid a lot of good practices. | zozbot234 wrote: | I like the SerenityOS design choices. Looks pretty much like | a 2001-or-so UI, but adopting more modern design elements | (such as, e.g. breadcrumb navigation widgets) where they | actually make sense. | tomxor wrote: | Totally agree. | | Unix Motif, Windows 3/95/98, Classic MacOS... they were all | highly usable. I crave the relentlessly, unashamed, | unambiguousness of these old UIs, compared to modern UI which | has devolved into something just as pretentious as the much | hated skeuomorphism stage, only at the other end of the | spectrum: extreme aesthetic minimalism at all cost (the user's | cost). | [deleted] | pshirshov wrote: | Cool. Does not support dark mode though. | girvo wrote: | Honest question, because I don't remember: does Windows 98? | | I know you could edit the theme around to set the UI scheme | colours to a darker one, but as a kid I could never make it | look nice | dec0dedab0de wrote: | There were preset themes. Some were dark. | girvo wrote: | They certainly weren't really a "dark mode" in the modern | usage though I thought, they had ridiculously high contrast | still around parts of it? | | I don't remember any of those dark presets being that dark | either except for the High Contrast one -- but this is | going to drive me nuts all day now so I'm going to dig | through a Win98 VM and see what I can find! | | If there's one that's a good fit, might be a fun pull | request to write for this project :) | MisterTea wrote: | I do remember a high contrast mode. Quite garish with white | text on black background with bright blues and I think yellow | and red too. | | I think this might be it: https://never- | obsolete.tumblr.com/post/180144131029/high-con... | | edit: yellow and red is from win 3.1's hotdog mode: | https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the- | windows-31-ho... | metadat wrote: | Speaking of yellow and red .. don't forget the venerable | and stunning HotDog Linux! | | https://hotdoglinux.com/ | laserdancepony wrote: | There was no dark mode fad in 1998. Different color schemes for | visually impaired people existed, but they were most often not | very aesthetic. | rietta wrote: | I remember Encarta being darkmode in 98. Maybe some of the | MSN stuff too. Even painted their own titlebars differently. | ranger_danger wrote: | it's not a fad. | raydiatian wrote: | DarkReader extension (available on all browsers) makes | everything have DarkMode. Unless you're visiting a website | designed by <canvas /> loving sadists, then you'll need a | welding helmet. | Etesam wrote: | I created a browser extension using this library! | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xp-newtab/ncfmloga... | | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xp-newtab/ | whatwhatwhat_ wrote: | why would anyone want to resurrect that terrible operating | system? that's the bar with which crappy software is measured | against | raydiatian wrote: | I can imagine this making the internet a little less scary to | some legacy users who are still working with '98 tech (you | would be horrified at how many there are). | atoav wrote: | Consider that for some people that _terrible operating system_ | might have been the first system the have ever used, maybe as a | kid. | | I (an avid linux user who spends more time in the terminal than | on a UI) certainly recall that my first contact with any | computer with a keyboard was Windows 95. It was a complete | mystery to me. The fascination that unexplainable object had on | a 7 year old certainly had an effect on my life. | | And guess what I remember? That grey interface with the blue | title bar. | | So as crappy as it might have been, as ethically unsound as the | company who made it might have behaved themselves, the visual | likeness of the system of my childhood tingles some old | memories. And that is not even remotely odd. People can be | nostalgic for literally everything, because we do not long for | the old artifacts themselves, but for the feelings, friends and | times we might have had when they were around. | | For some of us the grey windows of Microsofts operating system | have gained symbolic value beyond the aesthetical or functional | qualities inherent to the system itself. | int_19h wrote: | When it comes to look and feel specifically, these days it's | not rare for websites and even apps to use styling such that | it's impossible to tell a link from a label, and either from a | button - everything is flat, and color differences are often | deliberately minimal. That was not a problem in Win98 days. | ranger_danger wrote: | nostalgia. | ranger_danger wrote: | I wouldn't really call this "faithful", I have yet to see actual | pixel-perfect recreations of any Windows UI in any form | whatsoever, but I'd love to see one. | prezjordan wrote: | I would | metadat wrote: | ^ @prezjordan is the creator of 98.css, FYI :) | ranger_danger wrote: | https://github.com/andersevenrud/retro-css-shell-demo | | https://github.com/arturbien/React95 | | https://github.com/botoxparty/XP.css | | https://github.com/Gioni06/terminal.css | | https://github.com/jianzhongli/csswin10 | | https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css | | https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386 | | https://github.com/lachsfilet/Renkbench | | https://github.com/lolstring/window98-html-css-js | | https://github.com/micah5/PSone.css | | https://github.com/nostalgic-css/NES.css | | https://github.com/npjg/classic.css | | https://github.com/robbiebyrd/platinum | | https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css | | https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn | | https://github.com/ritenv/retro-desktop | | https://github.com/RoelN/c64css3 | | https://github.com/sakofchit/system.css | | https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss | | https://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/ | dhiggdyjkb wrote: | does a similiar thing exist for old macos style? | MitPitt wrote: | Also see XP and 7 versions: https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/ | https://khang-nd.github.io/7.css/ | warning26 wrote: | I'm a bit disappointed by the XP version's use of bitmaps for | certain elements; it's completely possible to achieve the XP | look purely with box-shadow properties. | jw1224 wrote: | I've always been a Mac guy, but there's no denying XP really | stood the test of time. | panzi wrote: | Very cool! I want a Windows 2000 version of it. I think that was | the nicest looking Windows. It is very close to this, but with a | slightly different main GUI color. Not a complete gray, but ever | so slightly beige. Makes it more pleasant to the eye, IMO. | warning26 wrote: | Ideally it should support easy recoloring to match any of the | exciting Windows classic themes! _Hotdog Stand_ support when? | | Also, agree that Win2000's color scheme was the best looking | iteration of the classic Windows look. | retrocryptid wrote: | It's disturbing how much I love this. Also Licensed under a MIT | license. Very Nice. | raydiatian wrote: | Can Microsoft sue for something like this? Ethically I don't | think they should. But, can they? | pmalynin wrote: | You can sue anyone for anything, this is America. | massung wrote: | IANAL, but I think not. | | I think this because there have been a plethora of tools and | libraries over the decades (think Tk, WxWidgets, and similar) | that emulate the native look-and-feel of the OS and I believe | a company has to defend it's IP/copyrights otherwise it | implicitly loses the ability to do so in the future. | | See: https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/enforce-your- | intellectual... | | Consequently, this is why companies will so often be quick to | "attack" random side projects people do targeting their IP | (even very old IP). It isn't necessarily out of a malicious | desire so much as a legal requirement. If they don't then a | "serious" company can follow suit and then they have no | ability to fight it. | | Edit: to be clear, obviously they _can_ sue. | grenoire wrote: | Honestly full-assed implementation. Font hinting is a bit odd | with a green sheen on Firefox Win 10... | int_19h wrote: | There are some minor discrepancies. Window titlebars weren't | gradient in Win98 - that came in Win2k and WinME. The combobox | dropdown has rounded ages (Win11 + Edge) and there's a gap | between it and the textbox. The tree view has different widths | for "+" and "-" on the nodes, and neither is properly aligned | with the dotted lines of the tree. | | The biggest giveaway, though, is that you can drag to highlight | text pretty much anywhere. | Kranar wrote: | Windows 98 used a gradient for its title bar [1]: | | https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Windows_98?file=W98-2.png | tshaddox wrote: | Did Windows 98 really have such laughably low contrast between | text and that dark grey background? | quickthrower2 wrote: | Yes! | prezjordan wrote: | Hey HN - author here. | | This was my burnout recovery project in April of 2020. Very much | a labor of love and a surprising way to realize I still liked | programming. I wrote some scattered thoughts here [0] | | I also "run" this project quite differently than I usually do - | when I receive a pull request instead of merging it I do a quick | glance through the user's github to make sure they're not a | spammer before giving them _commit access_ and asking them to | merge their own PR [1]. It has worked wonders. | | [0]: https://notes.jordanscales.com/ffa53b57 | | [1]: https://twitter.com/jdan/status/1528026508564078593 | RichardCNormos wrote: | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Cool! Wish we can do this easily with QT in Win10. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-23 23:00 UTC)