From the ®UI experts made it worse?¯ department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:21:34 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/145346/what-was-nice-about-the-ui-of-windows-2000/

I mean, this is preaching to the choir, but let?s go anyway.

I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. I?m mostly
using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in
QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots.

Some of the following will sound absolutely trivial, but I think it?s
worth pointing out.
? movq.de blog[1]

Just a series of observations about how much better graphical user
interfaces were back in the ?90s and early 2000s. We?ve lost so many affordances based on both common sense and scientific study, and what we
ended up with is a confusing, inconsistent mess. It doesn?t really
matter where you look ? user interface design has deteriorated since the
early 2000s, a decline that only accelerated thanks to the arrival of
the iPhone, where consistency is a dirty word, and the web, where the advertising people took prominence over the design people.

I just want my buttons to look like buttons man.

Links:
[1]: https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html (link)


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 20 Jun 2026 03:33:23 GMT, Retrograde wrote:

Just a series of observations about how much better graphical user
interfaces were back in the ?90s and early 2000s.

They haven?t gone away. The *nix platforms (Linux, BSD) still offer a
choice of GUIs from that era, and even earlier. They can do that
because the GUI is not inextricably bound into the OS kernel.

Why not give some of them a spin?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On 20 Jun 2026 03:33:23 GMT, Retrograde wrote:

Just a series of observations about how much better graphical user
interfaces were back in the '90s and early 2000s.

They haven't gone away. The *nix platforms (Linux, BSD) still offer a
choice of GUIs from that era, and even earlier. They can do that
because the GUI is not inextricably bound into the OS kernel.

The start menu and taskbar was part of explorer.exe back then and
could be replaced with alternatives (I don't know about in modern
Windows).

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 20 Jun 2026 03:33:23 GMT, Retrograde wrote:

From the ®UI experts made it worse?¯ department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:21:34 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/145346/what-was-nice-about-the-ui-of-windows-2000/

I mean, this is preaching to the choir, but let?s go anyway.

I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. I?m mostly
using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in
QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots.

Some of the following will sound absolutely trivial, but I think it?s
worth pointing out.
? movq.de blog[1]

Just a series of observations about how much better graphical user
interfaces were back in the ?90s and early 2000s. We?ve lost so many affordances based on both common sense and scientific study, and what we ended up with is a confusing, inconsistent mess. It doesn?t really
matter where you look ? user interface design has deteriorated since the early 2000s, a decline that only accelerated thanks to the arrival of
the iPhone, where consistency is a dirty word, and the web, where the advertising people took prominence over the design people.

I just want my buttons to look like buttons man.

Links:
[1]: https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html (link)

The worst about "modern" UI is that, it's aggresively not
keyboard-accessible. The more cool/beutiful it looks, the less keyboard-accessible it is.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

JJ <jj4public@gmail.com> wrote:

On 20 Jun 2026 03:33:23 GMT, Retrograde wrote:

From the ®UI experts made it worse?¯ department:
Feed: OSnews
Title: What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:21:34 +0000
Link: https://www.osnews.com/story/145346/what-was-nice-about-the-ui-of-windows-2000/

I mean, this is preaching to the choir, but let?s go anyway.

I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. I?m mostly
using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in
QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots.

Some of the following will sound absolutely trivial, but I think it?s
worth pointing out.
? movq.de blog[1]

Just a series of observations about how much better graphical user
interfaces were back in the ?90s and early 2000s. We?ve lost so many
affordances based on both common sense and scientific study, and what we
ended up with is a confusing, inconsistent mess. It doesn?t really
matter where you look ? user interface design has deteriorated since the
early 2000s, a decline that only accelerated thanks to the arrival of
the iPhone, where consistency is a dirty word, and the web, where the
advertising people took prominence over the design people.

I just want my buttons to look like buttons man.

Links:
[1]: https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html (link)

The worst about "modern" UI is that, it's aggresively not keyboard-accessible. The more cool/beutiful it looks, the less keyboard-accessible it is.

Also, there are only three colors that can ever be used for coloring
all UI affordances: 100% white, 99% white and 97% grey. Such that if
one does not have a $1500.00 HDR iphone screen, everything just looks
"white" and nothing can be seen.



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.17
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)