[HN Gopher] The Graphical User Interface Gallery
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The Graphical User Interface Gallery
Author : 6581
Score : 86 points
Date : 2023-03-26 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (toastytech.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (toastytech.com)
| userbinator wrote:
| The rant on the Windows 11 page is so on-point:
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/win11.html
|
| What isn't mentioned is that the spacing of the files in Explorer
| list view is much wider, and (at least for now) you can turn it
| back to the original spacing with the "compact" view option. A
| completely useless change for everyone not using a tiny touch
| screen as their sole pointing device. I absolutely hate this
| trend of hieroglyphic UI elements floating in a sea of white(or
| black)space...
| shaunxcode wrote:
| This is cool.... but where is the lisp machine(s)? It's sort of
| there as it mentions xerox early stuff but not directly. Needs a
| whole category for symbolics on the left I reckon.
| aardvark179 wrote:
| It's quite tricky to find interesting screen shots of Symbolics
| stuff. Weirdly I found more interesting stuff in old product
| demonstration videos on YouTube than I did in still images.
| koito17 wrote:
| The lack of any Smalltalk or Lisp machine examples stands out to
| me. I guess those were always niche. But still, would be nice to
| consider adding for completeness.
|
| On an unrelated note, I've always loved the look of the NeXTSTEP
| desktop. I know WindowMaker exists, but most modern Linux
| software nowadays simply clashes with its design and provides an
| awkward experience at best. It's not a desktop environment I'd
| use daily, but if enough graphical software played nicely with
| it, I'd definitely consider using it on Linux machines.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Yeah it's kinda sad that GNUstep never really took off.
| abraxas wrote:
| Some additional ones I would suggest are Open Look, latter days
| Solaris, and Irix.
|
| EDIT Never mind about the CDE era Solaris. That's already there.
| privong wrote:
| There are screenshots for IRIX 6.5 too:
| http://toastytech.com/guis/irix.html
| baal80spam wrote:
| In my opinion, Windows 2000 was the best Windows GUI. Clean,
| elegant and to the point with no useless crap.
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/w2k.html
| FpUser wrote:
| Think it is the best GUI in general, not just MS. Not perfect
| of course and many useful features invented later are missing
| but still ...
| illiarian wrote:
| MacOS 10.5 was good, too:
| http://toastytech.com/guis/osx15.html
|
| In both, just look at interface elements that are actually
| visible, and can be distinguished from one another. Buttons
| that look like buttons. Window chrome that looked like window
| chrome...
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Leopard/Snow Leopard were pretty good, but I have one gripe
| with them: the gray used for "metal" (titlebars, toolbars,
| bottom bars, etc) was oddly dark (only visible in the last
| of the linked screenshots, due to them being taken while
| windows were inactive). To me it was reminiscent of the
| gloomy grays of Windows 95/98 (which themselves were
| replaced by lighter shades in Win2K), and back when those
| OS versions were current I had a theme installed that
| replaced all the dark metal with the lighter white-gray
| gradients found in titlebars and "unified" toolbars in 10.4
| Tiger.
|
| The most refined iteration of Aqua overall IMO is that of
| Mavericks, aside from its scrollbars. It still had plenty
| of dimension, color, shading, etc while also feeling a
| touch more sharp and professional than earlier versions.
| ksrm wrote:
| Another great site from back in the day is the GUIdebook Gallery:
| https://guidebookgallery.org/guis
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Hadn't seen Windows 11, it looks like a somewhat tidier KDE,
| going full circle there.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html
|
| Now that's a blast from the past... these days, everything is in
| the cloud, so we have server-side evil rather than client-side
| evil :-P
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| One of the things that landed in my lap early on (System 8?) at
| Apple was the color picker. We were moving to PPC (PowerPC) and
| much of the HSL (hue, saturation, lightness)picker (HSV, hue,
| saturation, value?) was in raw 68K assembly.
|
| Having never written assemble (68K or otherwise), I knew I was
| out of my league ... but I persisted.
|
| Line by line, I replaced the assembler code with straight C. I
| was able to scare up a Motorola 68K assembler book around Apple
| and I recall that there was one assembler code I could not find:
| it turned out that it was a _68020_ -specific operator (and since
| we're talking _color_ picker I suppose an '020 could be assumed
| -- some kind of bit-shift-with-mask or some such weirdness,
| FWIW).
|
| (I guess each pixel of the "color wheel" was a rather complex
| calculation that someone had found benefitted from a straight
| assembler implementation -- keep in mind you could slide the
| brightness/value slider and the wheel would redraw in real-time
| on those underpowered Macs.)
|
| Apart from getting the assembler over to straight C so the PPC
| compiler could have something to compile I also had to move over
| the API. Color pickers were plug-ins and had a couple of calls
| that, again, I believe had a different signature on PPC.
|
| To learn the API and test it I wrote an HTML color picker that
| was essentially an RGB picker that gave you hex values instead of
| 0-255. Further I did a crayon picker as sample code (I thought
| this was kind of "Mac-like", right?).
|
| I was a bit surprised when the HTML and Crayon pickers shipped.
| Then, much later, when someone ending up "porting" the crayon
| picker to Mac OS X I suddenly had regrets at having not spent
| more time coming up with good names for the crayons. (There was a
| general pattern though: naming the grayscale colors after
| minerals for example.)
|
| I was almost fired I think though when my crayon picker shipped
| and it got out that I had slipped some T.S. Eliot quotes into the
| resource names in the Color Picker modules. I was called "into
| the office" and told that I had fucked up.
|
| It's true though, I had fucked up. I had let the "Easter egg"
| thing get to my head and wanted to leave my mark. I think they
| had to quickly rev the OS after stripping out the offending T.S.
| Eliot quotes.
|
| (There may though have still be an Easter egg lying around where
| the crayons would wear down until Jan 1 when they would be
| restored to full size.)
|
| (Also, that was the _first_ time I almost got fired. The second
| time would come when I was on the Photos team some 15 or so years
| later.)
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > (There may though have still be an Easter egg lying around
| where the crayons would wear down until Jan 1 when they would
| be restored to full size.)
|
| Missed opportunity to receive "new" crayons on Christmas Day!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Might have been Christmas Day. ;-)
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Were the quotes offensive, or was it just a case of someone
| having a stick up their behind?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, I suppose the latter. Apple was super-cautious (even
| then) about copyright violation (even though it was clearly
| outside copyright). I was too big for my britches.
|
| "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
|
| By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
|
| Till human voices wake us... and we drown."
|
| (Maybe I should add that Apple was sort of circling the drain
| about this time. I wondered if it was the last OS we would
| ship and there was a kind of sadness if that were the case.
| Somehow the line resonated with me at the time -- I felt we
| were a little like "drowners" ( _that_ would probably be more
| of a Suede reference).)
| aardvark179 wrote:
| The T. S. Elliot estate is notoriously litigious, so I can
| definitely understand the oh shit moment.
| culi wrote:
| You might also like my tiny collection of css stylesheets
|
| * The Sims https://thesimscss.inbn.dev/
|
| * Windows 98 https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
|
| * Windows XP https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/
|
| * Windows 7 https://khang-nd.github.io/7.css/
|
| * Tufte https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/
|
| Would love any suggested additions
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| URLs won't get linkified in code blocks. If you want people to
| click them I suggest that you convert them back to normal text
| (delete the spaces at the start of the line).
| culi wrote:
| I know I was being lazy because then I have to add two spaces
| between each list item. HN formatting is annoying. Updated
| tho
| leeoniya wrote:
| https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95
| abraxas wrote:
| It's funny in a sad way how nearly every modern app seems to
| adhere to these guidelines
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/uirant.html
| culi wrote:
| any examples?
| em-bee wrote:
| no doubt the realworld desk UI is the best of them all:
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/desk.html
|
| it claims that it doesn't have a bootscreen, but there are desks
| in cabinets with a roll-up or fold down cover (i had one of
| those), which were even key-proteccted. (like password protected
| desktops today)
| UberFly wrote:
| Instead of Man Shouting at Clouds, this is Man Shouting at GUIs.
| Still pretty entertaining. :)
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(page generated 2023-03-26 23:00 UTC)