[HN Gopher] 98.css - design system for building faithful recreat...
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98.css - design system for building faithful recreations of Windows
98 UIs
Author : metadat
Score : 120 points
Date : 2022-10-23 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jdan.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (jdan.github.io)
| alberth wrote:
| I give this a "10" on the UI usability scorecard.
| clnq wrote:
| The UIs around the year 2001 was fantastically accessible. The
| recent obsession with flatness undid a lot of good practices.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I like the SerenityOS design choices. Looks pretty much like
| a 2001-or-so UI, but adopting more modern design elements
| (such as, e.g. breadcrumb navigation widgets) where they
| actually make sense.
| tomxor wrote:
| Totally agree.
|
| Unix Motif, Windows 3/95/98, Classic MacOS... they were all
| highly usable. I crave the relentlessly, unashamed,
| unambiguousness of these old UIs, compared to modern UI which
| has devolved into something just as pretentious as the much
| hated skeuomorphism stage, only at the other end of the
| spectrum: extreme aesthetic minimalism at all cost (the user's
| cost).
| [deleted]
| pshirshov wrote:
| Cool. Does not support dark mode though.
| girvo wrote:
| Honest question, because I don't remember: does Windows 98?
|
| I know you could edit the theme around to set the UI scheme
| colours to a darker one, but as a kid I could never make it
| look nice
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| There were preset themes. Some were dark.
| girvo wrote:
| They certainly weren't really a "dark mode" in the modern
| usage though I thought, they had ridiculously high contrast
| still around parts of it?
|
| I don't remember any of those dark presets being that dark
| either except for the High Contrast one -- but this is
| going to drive me nuts all day now so I'm going to dig
| through a Win98 VM and see what I can find!
|
| If there's one that's a good fit, might be a fun pull
| request to write for this project :)
| MisterTea wrote:
| I do remember a high contrast mode. Quite garish with white
| text on black background with bright blues and I think yellow
| and red too.
|
| I think this might be it: https://never-
| obsolete.tumblr.com/post/180144131029/high-con...
|
| edit: yellow and red is from win 3.1's hotdog mode:
| https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-
| windows-31-ho...
| metadat wrote:
| Speaking of yellow and red .. don't forget the venerable
| and stunning HotDog Linux!
|
| https://hotdoglinux.com/
| laserdancepony wrote:
| There was no dark mode fad in 1998. Different color schemes for
| visually impaired people existed, but they were most often not
| very aesthetic.
| rietta wrote:
| I remember Encarta being darkmode in 98. Maybe some of the
| MSN stuff too. Even painted their own titlebars differently.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| it's not a fad.
| raydiatian wrote:
| DarkReader extension (available on all browsers) makes
| everything have DarkMode. Unless you're visiting a website
| designed by <canvas /> loving sadists, then you'll need a
| welding helmet.
| Etesam wrote:
| I created a browser extension using this library!
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xp-newtab/ncfmloga...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xp-newtab/
| whatwhatwhat_ wrote:
| why would anyone want to resurrect that terrible operating
| system? that's the bar with which crappy software is measured
| against
| raydiatian wrote:
| I can imagine this making the internet a little less scary to
| some legacy users who are still working with '98 tech (you
| would be horrified at how many there are).
| atoav wrote:
| Consider that for some people that _terrible operating system_
| might have been the first system the have ever used, maybe as a
| kid.
|
| I (an avid linux user who spends more time in the terminal than
| on a UI) certainly recall that my first contact with any
| computer with a keyboard was Windows 95. It was a complete
| mystery to me. The fascination that unexplainable object had on
| a 7 year old certainly had an effect on my life.
|
| And guess what I remember? That grey interface with the blue
| title bar.
|
| So as crappy as it might have been, as ethically unsound as the
| company who made it might have behaved themselves, the visual
| likeness of the system of my childhood tingles some old
| memories. And that is not even remotely odd. People can be
| nostalgic for literally everything, because we do not long for
| the old artifacts themselves, but for the feelings, friends and
| times we might have had when they were around.
|
| For some of us the grey windows of Microsofts operating system
| have gained symbolic value beyond the aesthetical or functional
| qualities inherent to the system itself.
| int_19h wrote:
| When it comes to look and feel specifically, these days it's
| not rare for websites and even apps to use styling such that
| it's impossible to tell a link from a label, and either from a
| button - everything is flat, and color differences are often
| deliberately minimal. That was not a problem in Win98 days.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| nostalgia.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I wouldn't really call this "faithful", I have yet to see actual
| pixel-perfect recreations of any Windows UI in any form
| whatsoever, but I'd love to see one.
| prezjordan wrote:
| I would
| metadat wrote:
| ^ @prezjordan is the creator of 98.css, FYI :)
| ranger_danger wrote:
| https://github.com/andersevenrud/retro-css-shell-demo
|
| https://github.com/arturbien/React95
|
| https://github.com/botoxparty/XP.css
|
| https://github.com/Gioni06/terminal.css
|
| https://github.com/jianzhongli/csswin10
|
| https://github.com/khang-nd/7.css
|
| https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386
|
| https://github.com/lachsfilet/Renkbench
|
| https://github.com/lolstring/window98-html-css-js
|
| https://github.com/micah5/PSone.css
|
| https://github.com/nostalgic-css/NES.css
|
| https://github.com/npjg/classic.css
|
| https://github.com/robbiebyrd/platinum
|
| https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css
|
| https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn
|
| https://github.com/ritenv/retro-desktop
|
| https://github.com/RoelN/c64css3
|
| https://github.com/sakofchit/system.css
|
| https://github.com/vinibiavatti1/TuiCss
|
| https://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/
| dhiggdyjkb wrote:
| does a similiar thing exist for old macos style?
| MitPitt wrote:
| Also see XP and 7 versions: https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/
| https://khang-nd.github.io/7.css/
| warning26 wrote:
| I'm a bit disappointed by the XP version's use of bitmaps for
| certain elements; it's completely possible to achieve the XP
| look purely with box-shadow properties.
| jw1224 wrote:
| I've always been a Mac guy, but there's no denying XP really
| stood the test of time.
| panzi wrote:
| Very cool! I want a Windows 2000 version of it. I think that was
| the nicest looking Windows. It is very close to this, but with a
| slightly different main GUI color. Not a complete gray, but ever
| so slightly beige. Makes it more pleasant to the eye, IMO.
| warning26 wrote:
| Ideally it should support easy recoloring to match any of the
| exciting Windows classic themes! _Hotdog Stand_ support when?
|
| Also, agree that Win2000's color scheme was the best looking
| iteration of the classic Windows look.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| It's disturbing how much I love this. Also Licensed under a MIT
| license. Very Nice.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Can Microsoft sue for something like this? Ethically I don't
| think they should. But, can they?
| pmalynin wrote:
| You can sue anyone for anything, this is America.
| massung wrote:
| IANAL, but I think not.
|
| I think this because there have been a plethora of tools and
| libraries over the decades (think Tk, WxWidgets, and similar)
| that emulate the native look-and-feel of the OS and I believe
| a company has to defend it's IP/copyrights otherwise it
| implicitly loses the ability to do so in the future.
|
| See: https://www.varnumlaw.com/insights/enforce-your-
| intellectual...
|
| Consequently, this is why companies will so often be quick to
| "attack" random side projects people do targeting their IP
| (even very old IP). It isn't necessarily out of a malicious
| desire so much as a legal requirement. If they don't then a
| "serious" company can follow suit and then they have no
| ability to fight it.
|
| Edit: to be clear, obviously they _can_ sue.
| grenoire wrote:
| Honestly full-assed implementation. Font hinting is a bit odd
| with a green sheen on Firefox Win 10...
| int_19h wrote:
| There are some minor discrepancies. Window titlebars weren't
| gradient in Win98 - that came in Win2k and WinME. The combobox
| dropdown has rounded ages (Win11 + Edge) and there's a gap
| between it and the textbox. The tree view has different widths
| for "+" and "-" on the nodes, and neither is properly aligned
| with the dotted lines of the tree.
|
| The biggest giveaway, though, is that you can drag to highlight
| text pretty much anywhere.
| Kranar wrote:
| Windows 98 used a gradient for its title bar [1]:
|
| https://microsoft.fandom.com/wiki/Windows_98?file=W98-2.png
| tshaddox wrote:
| Did Windows 98 really have such laughably low contrast between
| text and that dark grey background?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yes!
| prezjordan wrote:
| Hey HN - author here.
|
| This was my burnout recovery project in April of 2020. Very much
| a labor of love and a surprising way to realize I still liked
| programming. I wrote some scattered thoughts here [0]
|
| I also "run" this project quite differently than I usually do -
| when I receive a pull request instead of merging it I do a quick
| glance through the user's github to make sure they're not a
| spammer before giving them _commit access_ and asking them to
| merge their own PR [1]. It has worked wonders.
|
| [0]: https://notes.jordanscales.com/ffa53b57
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/jdan/status/1528026508564078593
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Cool! Wish we can do this easily with QT in Win10.
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(page generated 2022-10-23 23:00 UTC)