Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

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>t's unfortunate that desktop UI has remained stuck for quite awhile

A lot of things get "stuck" and for good reason. Steering wheel, gas, and brake. Sight, trigger, stock. Underwear, pants, socks, etc.

Personally, I think the NT team really nailed the concept of the desktop back in 1993 with 3.1. The start button which hid programs and allowed access to other functions was incredibly handy, a bit like how a desk has a desk drawer within reach at all times. The desktop as a dumping ground for whatever you choose and system tray for misc stuff really, really works well and with mimimal cruft. Windows applications worked unlike MacOS applications by integrating the menu bar directly into the application itself instead of making it a detached accessory of the OS. Right-click support also allowed a lot of dynamic functionality.

I understand that almost none of these specific were their innovations, but they took a lot of half-cooked ideas and made something very, very usable.

Its a shame the NT team is never brought up like the Amiga or MacOS teams. I don't think they've gotten their proper due. Its also interesting that MS ran back to the start button/menu only three years after letting it go. Its incredible how powerful the NT way of doing things still is.

"Personally, I think the NT team really nailed the concept of the desktop back in 1993 with 3.1. The start button which hid programs and allowed access to other functions was incredibly handy, a bit like how a desk has a desk drawer within reach at all times."

One of us is remembering things incorrectly ... I am quite certain that the start menu interface debuted with Windows 95 and was then later adopted by Windows NT 4.0.

NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 all used the old Windows 3.1 user interface.

Right ?

You're correct. Windows NT 3.1 was visually nearly identical to Windows 3.1. This was part of the reason for releasing a 1.0 product with a 3.1 version number.

I think part of it too is that on the desktop, we generally stay in one or two applications for long amounts of time. For example, we'll spend hours inside 1 or 2 browser windows. All the changes is the content within the browser, the positioning will stay static for hours. Or an IDE, spreadsheet, wordprocessor, etc... - all are long-running apps, constant opening and closing or resizing isn't needed. Current DEs also get app launching right, you can have workspaces, etc... The practical difference between using the OSX, Gnome Shell, KDE Plasma 5 or KDE 4, Ubuntu Unity, even Windows - isn't all that big. You can open your app with search, resize it to half the screen or maximize it easily, and you can switch through apps easily. They've all converged with a similar set of features for everyday use, the main differences are simply little widgets here and there.

I see those concepts in RISC OS¹, developed by Acorn (as in ARM, originally Acorn RISC Machines).

The buttons on the left open windows containing applications and files, like the Resources window that is already open. On the right are running applications. The menu on the text editor has been opened with the middle mouse button; to complete the save action (for a first time save, or new destination) the icon can be dragged to a file window.

The desktop can have files, folders or applications pinned to it, but there are none in this screenshot.

The screenshot is as the OS was released in 1991. The first released version, from 1987, had similar functionality but lacked icons on the desktop ("pinboard").

(The other thing I liked about this OS was how applications were packaged. They were simply directories beginning with "!" containing, at minimum, an executable file called "!Run". This made it nice to explore, especially as !Run was often written in BASIC, and there was a BASIC editor and interpreter in ROM.)

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS#/media/Fi...

First I think this site and idea presented is brilliantly built and communicated - while I don't like gestures myself, they are useful for many things...

That said, one of the most elegant and wonderful UX I ever had was with Softimage starting on sgi in 1993.

Still to this day I felt they nailed user interaction so wonderfully back then.

When you watch someone interact with a deeply complex application and see them just swim through using it - it's really great.

Like professional animators and both sound and video editors/producers etc.

I don't have any opinion at the moment on this as I need to read all the comments and watch his video, but we'll put together site.

They actually took the "Start menu" from OS/2, which probably got inspired by some of Unix WMs back then.

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