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Comment by petilon | Hacker News Reader

The notion that removing all shades and shadows is "cleaner" is a fad. This fad will end, and the sooner it ends the better it is for all of us.

Windows 1.0 doesn't have shades and shadows. It is "cleaner" in that sense than NeXTSTEP. But few will argue that it is more beautiful.

Here's Windows 1.0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0#/media/File:Window...

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I really don't understand why that adjective is so commonly used to presumably denote something positive. To me, "cleaner" evokes images of emptiness, like a house you've just built and haven't started to actually use. The cleanest room has nothing in it. I think that's precisely the opposite of what you want.

Have you ever shopped for closets? Every major closet retailer has pictures of their product holding a ridiculously small number of apparel.[1][2] I, and especially my wife, have more than 4 shirts. I would like to see how a closet design looks when full. Sure the nearly empty closet looks cleaner, but it does not represent my use case, or that of anyone I know.

The same could be said for architectural renderings showing a handful of visitors at a place designed to be crowded.

[1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/images/products/pax-corner-wardro...

[2] https://www.closetsbydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/C...

> Have you ever shopped for closets? Every major closet retailer has pictures of their product holding a ridiculously small number of apparel.[1][2] I, and especially my wife, have more than 4 shirts. I would like to see how a closet design looks when full. Sure the nearly empty closet looks cleaner, but it does not represent my use case, or that of anyone I know.

Ok. That explains it. So the new UI's (or UX's) are like closets waiting to be used. You just have to add a pipe (you need to figure out where because real programmers don't ...) and a closet seat lid and it's ready for use.

> The notion that removing all shades and shadows is "cleaner" is a fad. This fad will end, and the sooner it ends the better it is for all of us.

It will not end so soon. They just rediscovered windows 1.0 and there is a lobg way till 95.

> Windows 10 doesn't have shades and shadows. It is "cleaner" in that sense than NeXTSTEP. But few will argue that it is more beautiful.

I fixed it for you.

I don't think anyone claimed that lack of shades and shadows automatically makes something beautiful. NeXTSTEP was simply designed by people who had more experience and taste in design. Also, that windows screenshot was when they were using sort of a hybrid "character mode" to display a graphical interface, which is quite a limitation.

I like some shading and 3d-ness, but it can be taken too far.

Having never used it, I didn't realize Windows 1.0 had "responsive" menu bars!

Similar for Athena X11 widgets, no shades and shadows. Where Motif had them everywhere.

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