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

Author here – happy to see this posted again!

This was my burnout recovery project and I wrote some thoughts on it recently https://notes.jordanscales.com/98-css-reflections

Thanks for your work on this! I recently used 98.css in my fairly simple web app[0] for a recreation of something from my childhood, and it worked beautifully for my purposes.

[0]: https://www.mathsheets.net/

Phenomenal work

> burnout recovery

I hope you're feeling better. Interesting how retro computing, like old games and operating systems, can be comforting and even healing. I've had similar experience with emulators - playing Gameboy and Nintendo games from childhood, or running Macintosh System 9.

Reminds me of Pico-8, SerenityOS, TempleOS. There's a common thread of a retro-style computing environment that can be entirely understood and controlled by the user.

I imagine there's deeper psychological dynamics to this, like a safe "sandbox" as a therapeutic tool.

It also says something about design with empathy and focus on user experience. There are so many hostile dark patterns these days in technology and society, that it's a relief to find some space (physical or mental) that's designed for your comfort.

This is the most accurate replication I have ever seen of Windows 98. Wish there's one for Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

I'd suggest using checkboxes instead of radio buttons for the operator selection. It would be useful, I think, to have a mix of just addition and subtraction, or just multiplication and division, instead of having one option or all four.

I hadn't thought of that use case, thanks for the feedback!