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Posted by adunk 5 hours ago

Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes(www.typewritten.org)
214 points | 66 comments
bronlund 2 hours ago|
I can't help thinking about how much we have lost. Just finding the scrollbar nowadays can be a challenge. Not to mention if you want to resize a pane - in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab.
pjc50 1 hour ago|
Operating systems of that era were designed based on UX research to help people use the unfamiliar operating system.

Subsequent ones were designed by UI designers, and opinionated senior managers, who already knew how to use them, and took out usability features to make them "look nicer". This sort of worked when the opinionated manager was Steve Jobs. Most managers are not Steve Jobs.

> in some applications they seem to have taken extra steps to make it difficult to find the line to grab

Pet peeve of mine in Windows where the line is at most one pixel now. They also took away the coloured distinction between title bars for the active window, so you don't know where keystrokes are going to go.

DVRC 21 minutes ago||
The man behind this site is known for his skills of recoverying data from QIC tapes. Looking at the "Software Library" section makes me always wonder if it will be released at some point, since that there is some stuff that isn't on BitSavers or other sites.
delta_p_delta_x 20 minutes ago||
I really wish Windows 11 had a Windows 2000 mode. I want a grey, boxy UI, but I also want al the modern technologies Windows has introduced since—DirectStorage, D3D12, fast SSDs, device-independent pixels and vector UIs, all written directly against a Windows API that is modernised, safe, and easy to use. No React, no ads in my weather app; the only browser on my computer will be the browser itself.
jchw 3 hours ago||
Probably also worth dropping this here in the off chance someone here will be part of today's lucky 10,000. http://toastytech.com/guis/

At first glance it looks like this is much more breadth over depth. Quite an array of systems here.

jll29 2 hours ago||
My favorites:

GEM + Ventura Publisher http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/ventura-publisher-1....

Viewpoint http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/6085-viewpoint-2.0-p...

AUX http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/aux-3.0.1.png

It's suprising at first look that GEM tops my preferences but I recall having a very fond time on the Atari ST 520+. It had one of the best b/w monitors and TOS+GEM was orderly and uncluttered.

Only preemptive multitasking and per-window menus were missing. As a plus, the OS was in ROM, so boot times were <1s.

hermitcrab 59 minutes ago||
Invisible scroll bars are a source of constant annoyance. And it sometimes takes me several attempts to move a window, because of all the various clickable things without visible boundaries. Frustrating.
anthk 44 minutes ago|
On GNU/Linux run this command, it will fix it for all the GTK based desktops, such as XFCE, Gnome and Mate:

               gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface overlay-scrolling false
Under Mac you might have a similar Cocoa setting or whatever is called (nsproperties?) with "defaults write".
hermitcrab 39 minutes ago||
I'm on Windows and Mac. Not because I love them, but because that is where my customers are. Also I try to keep my computers fairly vanilla, so that they don't look too different to the user's computer when I do videos or screenshots of my software.
lynndotpy 4 hours ago||
I love this kind of thing :) I finally have a second site to bookmark alongside this similar collection: https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots
keyle 2 hours ago|
Irix 5 was so clean!
giamma 3 hours ago||
No mention of GeOS!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Softworks

walrus01 2 hours ago||
Or GS/OS for the Apple IIgs, the weird "not exactly Mac OS" GUI.
cout 2 hours ago||
There is the 16-bit Geoworks Ensemble (PC/GEOS), at least.
aidos 2 hours ago||
Alleycat in CGA just hit me hard.

For the people that didn’t live through this time, lining these images up makes it obvious why those that did speak of how visually impressive the Amiga was.

whynotmaybe 25 minutes ago|
Nothing beats a 40 year nostalgia in the morning!

Except missing that sock and falling down into the dog's path and understanding the concept of fighting like cats and dogs.

I just found out that the theme song is on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_(video_game)

pedrogpimenta 3 hours ago|
This is like porn for me :)

It's one of my favourite things, looking at and analyzing older interfaces. Some are lovely, some are cute, some are ugly, but most are... "naïve"? I love to think about the effort, the research, the trials and tribulations. I feel I will spend a great deal of time in this page!

repelsteeltje 2 hours ago|
> [..] lovely [..] cute [..] ugly [..] naive...

First and foremost to me those screenshots are somewhat disappointing as they can't match my memories. NeXT, BeOS, Irix, OpenLook, SunOS, Arthur (imagine the diversity)... they were SO awesomely impressive at insanely high multi-sync CRT resolution.

Reality simply can't match the mind's eye, at least not for me.

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