The one that looks like Windows 7 seems to be the most complete and has a bunch of stuff not found in the others, like progress bar or menus. In fact while I never liked the window decorations that 7 used, the rest wouldn't look bad on an electron app
rauli_ 10 minutes ago [-]
Now all we are missing is Windows 3.x -version.
a-french-anon 1 hours ago [-]
Shilling mine (not as decoupled and extensive as those), since it's quite on point:
THANK you so much for the XP one. XP's UI is my favorite of all the Windows UIs. It had just enough modernity to feel sleek but still had contrast to be easily seen and read and understood.
Windows 7 UI was a bit too flashy and employed looks over readability and Windows 98 was too old fashioned and also suffered from a lack of contrast with all the grey.
mrighele 23 minutes ago [-]
I never enjoyed the XP one. Somebody called the Fisher-Price ui, and I think the remark is not too off. I would always switch to the "classic" UI, which I think was the same as Windows 2000, which in my opinion is the best of all (it is a similar but different from the one of Windows 98, especially in color choice and icon)
stavros 4 hours ago [-]
Was XP your first OS, by any chance? I really like the 98 UI, but that was my first and it evokes really nice memories.
selectnull 4 hours ago [-]
XP was my favorite as well, at least among the Windows. Not the first OS I used (that would be DOS 3). But it was the last MS OS I used.
stavros 4 hours ago [-]
Oh it was my favorite OS as well, it crashed way way less and did its job admirably, I just prefer the Windows 98 UI.
baq 4 hours ago [-]
So basically windows server 2003. Peak desktop productivity UX.
dotancohen 29 minutes ago [-]
For me that was KDE 3. In fact, KDE 3 had such a fan base that even until today there is still an active port.
stavros 4 hours ago [-]
Yep, exactly.
d4rti 1 hours ago [-]
XP x64 was a lovely desktop, and was essentially 2k3 desktop. Last Windows system I enjoyed using.
ChrisNorstrom 2 hours ago [-]
Windows 98 was my first, but I loved XP UI the most, especially in the later years when Microsoft launched the ZUNE XP theme.
myfonj 2 hours ago [-]
NB, that style does not play well with non-native DPI (e.g. when you have monitor set to 150% scale); to see it mapped to physical pixels, try running this in the browser's console:
(multiply the scale by whole number to get it "crisply zoomed").
Still not 100% perfect, but much closer to intended rendering, I guess.
agluszak 14 minutes ago [-]
I'd claim that this is way better than what we've got after years of UX/UI "research" and "improvements".
And it's not that I'm some old boomer. In '98 I was one year old. I just hate buttons which don't look like buttons, tabs which don't look like tabs, text fields that you have to click to discover they're editable etc.
akx 4 hours ago [-]
By eye alone, I'm pretty sure that is not MS Sans Serif as rendered in Windows 95 and Windows 98.
worble 2 hours ago [-]
Recreating old fonts in modern browsers is a hard problem
Sure, but I refuse to call this a faithful recreation of the aesthetic until the fonts look correct. :D
On a related note, I did start working on some tools to work with legacy .FONs for this exact purpose earlier this year, but the project is iceboxed for now...
vintagedave 4 hours ago [-]
They’ve also kept the pixelated nature. The XP style sheet linked in another comment [1] draws at high res for its text and shapes and so retains the feel of the UI without the constraints.
I — we? — like the 98 etc UI for its clarity and simplicity not its low resolution.
The fonts are pixelated, but those pixels don't appear to align with the physical ones, so they're blurry in some places. Meanwhile, on a real 98 you either had crisp fonts, or neatly and consistently blurred by the CRT.
Aardwolf 1 hours ago [-]
This is really cool, the only thing I see is the font rendering looks choppy. An antialiasing issue I think, but it looks worse than some non-antialiazed fonts (like the EGA 8x14 pixels font) too
To be very pedantic: also the dropdown menu, when opened, looks very different than the original 98 style
uniq7 60 minutes ago [-]
Chrome on Windows 10 here. The font rendering looks very similar (if not identical) to what I remember it in Win98 -- no antialiasing, 1px thick, very easy to spot the pixels on curved strokes, very easy to spot the pixels on bold style, etc.
The style looks incredible accurate to what I remember, although there are some differences:
- The opened dropdown menu, as my parent suggested.
- I don't remember textareas being resizable.
- I remember stepped sliders had little marks indicating where each step is. Only continuous sliders (e.g., the one in the Windows volume control) had no marks.
- The tabs don't look like as I remember from Win95/98, these ones look more like Win 3.1. Too much padding, the border is too thick, and the border radius is too big.
- In tables, the headers looked like buttons because they were actually buttons (you could press them to sort the table). However, here they are not clickable.
Aardwolf 49 seconds ago [-]
Interesting, I tried zooming in now and when zooming in far enough the font does look alright!
It might be that it just happens to look bad on high resolution screens, and/or maybe some browser fractional scaling issue
lastdong 1 hours ago [-]
Where’s Clippy?
Great job! I think adding Clippy notifications would be a fun touch
https://git.sr.ht/~q3cpma/website/tree/master/item/src/resou...
https://world-playground-deceit.net/
These make me want to go all the way.
Windows 7 UI was a bit too flashy and employed looks over readability and Windows 98 was too old fashioned and also suffered from a lack of contrast with all the grey.
Still not 100% perfect, but much closer to intended rendering, I guess.
And it's not that I'm some old boomer. In '98 I was one year old. I just hate buttons which don't look like buttons, tabs which don't look like tabs, text fields that you have to click to discover they're editable etc.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230603234837/https://vistaserv...
On a related note, I did start working on some tools to work with legacy .FONs for this exact purpose earlier this year, but the project is iceboxed for now...
I — we? — like the 98 etc UI for its clarity and simplicity not its low resolution.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42056921
To be very pedantic: also the dropdown menu, when opened, looks very different than the original 98 style
The style looks incredible accurate to what I remember, although there are some differences:
- The opened dropdown menu, as my parent suggested.
- I don't remember textareas being resizable.
- I remember stepped sliders had little marks indicating where each step is. Only continuous sliders (e.g., the one in the Windows volume control) had no marks.
- The tabs don't look like as I remember from Win95/98, these ones look more like Win 3.1. Too much padding, the border is too thick, and the border radius is too big.
- In tables, the headers looked like buttons because they were actually buttons (you could press them to sort the table). However, here they are not clickable.
It might be that it just happens to look bad on high resolution screens, and/or maybe some browser fractional scaling issue
Great job! I think adding Clippy notifications would be a fun touch