Re:Designing Windows 95’s User Interface
by adrian_b on Monday November 28, 2022 @03:30PM
(#33779135)
I still believe that the file manager XTree for MS-DOS had the best user interface of any file manager that I have ever used, in Windows, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux or MacOS, allowing one to perform any task with a minimum of key presses. It already had separate histories for each text field of the user interface, in which items could be made persistent. Even today, most programs with GUIs have much more poorly implemented histories, if they have them.
Also for MS-DOS, the BRIEF editor for programmers used tiling windows and (optionally) a menu-driven interface that was better designed than that of most later text editors. It also allowed the redefinition of what happens when any key on the keyboard is pressed. The default action of inserting in the text the associated character could be replaced by an arbitrary script, which made easy the implementation of things like auto-completion or syntax coloring.
Nevertheless, even if some important applications in Windows 95 were still regressions from the point of the user interface in comparison with what was available for MS-DOS, Windows 95 looked much nicer than anything using the standard VGA text modes and it was the version to which I have switched from MS-DOS.
Even if I had previously tried Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11, those had felt too much like useless toys, in comparison with the professional programs that I was using under MS-DOS. The Windows 95 taskbar was definitely a very important improvement over Windows 3.x.
Also for MS-DOS, the BRIEF editor for programmers used tiling windows and (optionally) a menu-driven interface that was better designed than that of most later text editors. It also allowed the redefinition of what happens when any key on the keyboard is pressed. The default action of inserting in the text the associated character could be replaced by an arbitrary script, which made easy the implementation of things like auto-completion or syntax coloring.
Nevertheless, even if some important applications in Windows 95 were still regressions from the point of the user interface in comparison with what was available for MS-DOS, Windows 95 looked much nicer than anything using the standard VGA text modes and it was the version to which I have switched from MS-DOS.
Even if I had previously tried Windows 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11, those had felt too much like useless toys, in comparison with the professional programs that I was using under MS-DOS. The Windows 95 taskbar was definitely a very important improvement over Windows 3.x.