I agree. You knew visually what everything did. A button was a button and was noticeably off or on and things like that. I would put classic on for my XP UI I love it so much.
It was a very explicit interface. It was not as sexy as a 3D composited one, but it did not play peek-a-boo. Scrolling through a list, like downloads on a web page, you would see 20 or 30 line items, not two or three. It also worked on a slow CPU without a GPU. We have lost something since those highly-optimized 2D interfaces, from the same era as Super Nintendo Mode 7 affine transform and After Dark/Xscreensaver 2.5D graphics.
I can’t stand things that are hidden until I mouse over or click on them. Just draw everything and let me scroll
I disagree, but only slightly, Windows 2000 was my personal favorite, especially for its version of Windows Explorer.
The one area where I think 98 and 2000 regress from 95 is that they introduce "web content" in applications that are not web browsers - specifically, random objects respond to single-clicks instead of double-clicks, and blue underlined (and sometimes not even underlined) hyperlinks start to appear.
There was no reason to do that.
Active X desktop crap could be disabled with some Registry tweaks.
It wasn't just on the desktop, though. It was in the Explorer, in Office apps, and various other places.