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In retrospect, I think that much of the flatter Windows 3.x design is timeless whereas the pseudo 3D bevels of Windows 95 look dated by today’s standards.

The only practically useful UX novelties in Windows 95 were the start menu and combining the previously separate file and program manager paradigms.

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Win3.x had more prominent 3D bevels in places where it did have them - which was all the buttons.

I suspect that the main reason why it was generally flatter is because it supported monochrome displays. Win95, on the other hand, required VGA 640x480x16 (colors, not bits) as minimum. And of those 16 EGA colors, there were 4 different shades of grey! - a luxury they made full use of in the new 3D widgets.

Small nitpick but those are CGA colors.

I've seen some re-interpretations of phaux-3d rectilinear skeuomorphism that used a lot of light scattering effects and looked extremely modern. I thought around this year those would be common but everyone seems to be still hung up on flat design which is a bit disappointing (and then there's adwaita which is off in left field picking daisies as usual.)

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