←back to thread

838 points bennettfeely | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.7s | source
Show context
atum47 ◴[] No.22942201[source]
that's really gorgeous. I find windows 95 aesthetics a master piece. I'm not gonna lie, I thought about windows 95 when I was creating FOS, my Fake Operational System "framework".

I'm thinking about refactoring it and I'll may incorporate windows color scheme to it. Here's the link if you wanna see what I am talking about.

https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fos

replies(3): >>22942674 #>>22943580 #>>22943744 #
Scapeghost ◴[] No.22943744[source]
I don't know, Windows 95 looked crude even during its day. Functional, but not pleasant. I guess Brutalist would be the term? As soon as there was the ability to skin it, people tried to veer away the default look, with Mac-like styles being a common alternative.

People probably have rose-tinted nostalgia for the 95 era because of the nightmare that followed: Windows XP :)

replies(2): >>22943937 #>>22944687 #
djsumdog ◴[] No.22943937[source]
95 and XP both had good scroll bars. XP styling was pretty good for its era. Modern day scroll bars are atrocious on a lot of toolkits.
replies(2): >>22944103 #>>22944173 #
chrisseaton ◴[] No.22944173[source]
Now that we have touch gestures we don’t really need visible scroll bars anymore do we? Just the little position indicator that pops up while scrolling.
replies(2): >>22944257 #>>22944686 #
worble ◴[] No.22944257[source]
What if you want to know the relative length of a page without scrolling first?

What if it's one of those webpages with a full height hero as the first element and no indicator you can actually scroll?

What if I want to click and drag the scroll to a specific location but have to take wild flailing guesses at where the scrollbar actually is because it keeps going invisible?

replies(1): >>22944293 #
chrisseaton ◴[] No.22944293[source]
There’s always obscure use cases like this. You could go on forever listing individual people’s wants and you’d end up with a Homer car.

We design interfaces for the many first, and keep them as simple as possible but not simpler.

replies(3): >>22944371 #>>22944426 #>>22945080 #
Symbiote ◴[] No.22944426[source]
Knowing how long a document is, and whereabouts your current view is, seems pretty fundamental.

You may as well argue against page numbers in books.

replies(2): >>22944433 #>>22944446 #
chrisseaton ◴[] No.22944433[source]
You just scroll a tiny bit and you can see. Doesn't need to on the screen all the time, taking up space, distracting from the content which is what I care about, rather than whizz-bang user-interface elements.
replies(2): >>22944668 #>>22944776 #
noisem4ker ◴[] No.22944668[source]
Me asking myself "how long is this article" before I start reading it is a distraction? Too bad, I can't help but want to know. I could've learned that instantly by unconsciously glancing at the scroll indicator, but instead I have to move the whole content down for it to appear (possibly with a whizz-bang animation, no less), introducing friction and further distracting me from the content. Good job, I guess.
replies(1): >>22944679 #
1. chrisseaton ◴[] No.22944679[source]
I don't know what you tell you - most people don't think about user interfaces like this. As we can clearly tell by people not designing them like this anymore.
replies(3): >>22944774 #>>22945257 #>>22961967 #
2. noisem4ker ◴[] No.22944774[source]
If I were to find a causal relation, it would be the opposite: people not expecting affordances such as scroll indicators would be a result of designers hiding them in the first place.
3. Symbiote ◴[] No.22945257[source]
As far as I'm concerned, the people designing modern user interface styles are not doing it for my benefit.

They're doing it to sell adverts (removing the boundaries between content, forms and advertising), track where I'm looking (he's opened the scroll bar! our content is engaging/boring!), adopt fashions to make their competitors appear dated and justify their own careers.

replies(1): >>22962002 #
4. perl4ever ◴[] No.22961967[source]
Most user interfaces are not designed any more with any intent to provide what's best for the user, because they are part of a product being sold to corporations/advertisers.
5. perl4ever ◴[] No.22962002[source]
More than that, it's totally adversarial. I don't think the interface on a typical website is just sloppy or badly designed; it's designed to hamper access to information in a very sophisticated way, in order to prevent people from getting what they are looking for and leaving, but at the same time keeping them on the hook with the perception they are almost there.