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98.css – design system for building faithful recreations of Windows 98 UIs

(jdan.github.io)
838 points bennettfeely | 1 comments | 21 Apr 20 23:51 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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atum47 ◴[22 Apr 20 04:30 UTC] 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

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Scapeghost ◴[22 Apr 20 09:31 UTC] 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 :)

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djsumdog ◴[22 Apr 20 09:58 UTC] 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.
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Scapeghost ◴[22 Apr 20 10:29 UTC] No.22944103[source]▶
> XP styling was pretty good for its era.

XP was skinned like a very tacky Fischer Price toy, with garish colors and oversized elements that would have been more at home on a touchscreen. I don't think anyone called it a good theme unsarcastically. Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? They just take screen space and billions of people do fine without them on Macs and mobile OSes.

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1. roelschroeven ◴[22 Apr 20 16:27 UTC] No.22947311{4}[source]▶
> Why do we even need always visible scroll bars? They just take screen space and billions of people do fine without them on Macs and mobile OSes.

Don't get me started.

Pros of a proper always-present scrollbar with appropriately-styled thumb:

- It indicates that the thing you're viewing even is scrollable. - You can see at once where you are in a document, and how large it is relative to your viewport. - It offers a convenient UI to scroll in both small or large amounts, or scroll to the very top or bottom. For lots of uses the scroll wheel on your mouse is a substitute, but certainly not for everything.

Cons:

- It takes a tiny bit of screen real estate - It offends some people's esthetics taste, I guess