Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen.
But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive. The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron.
I imagine that the database for the online file association service for Windows XP has been lost to time, but for those who remember it: was it any good?
It seems like quite a good idea now -- if I remember correctly, Windows as of current seems to suggest a generic Bing search, which brings up all the spam "What extension is XXX?" sites.
That could have changed; I haven't really used Windows after 11's debut.
Can it really be called evolution? That sort of implies an improvement.
Interestingly enough, the default GTK file chooser also sucks. I notice
this nowadays because I broke something in my setup but I don't know
what, and the default file chooser does not remember anything I do.
Prior to that I found out that for opening files via the browser,
I need to have e. g. xdg-desktop-portal-gtk running. Well, my browser
never told me that; it just silently failed to download anything, I
could not choose any local file for file upload. I only found out
eventually, but when I found out, the fix was easy, but still, the
question is why such things break silently. This is simply incredibly
poor engineering and design, and that happens on linux too. That way
they'll never achieve linux desktop of the year. The decision makers
here are just horribly bad at designing anything. The whole GTK team
fell victim to this, now that it is a GNOMEy toolkit only.
When we ever get one-toolkit-that-fixes-everything (well ...), hopefully
they are really allowing only mega-smart people who can think objectively
and try to IMPROVE things rather than regress or take away functionality
willy-nilly style (as the GNOMEy devs do).
evolution need not necessarily be an improvement, foe example mammals have a blind spot in their eyes because of the optic nerve, octopuses don't have a blind spot. but octopuses were before mammals
I think Windows 9x was peak Windows.
Everything is clear, you know what's a button and what's not. Information density is also high, which is a good thing on a computer screen.
But the main thing is that Windows 9x felt responsive. The Windows widgets felt solid and performant, while "modern" UWP apps feel clunky and prone to breakage. And don't even get me started on Electron.
Edit. See OP's previous article here, he managed to capture what I was trying to say in more details, with nice screenshots: https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html
Products have to change in a visible way so people know they're new.
I imagine that the database for the online file association service for Windows XP has been lost to time, but for those who remember it: was it any good?
It seems like quite a good idea now -- if I remember correctly, Windows as of current seems to suggest a generic Bing search, which brings up all the spam "What extension is XXX?" sites.
That could have changed; I haven't really used Windows after 11's debut.
If I recall correctly, it was pretty bad. It used to open Internet Explorer on this page: http://shell.windows.com/fileassoc/0409/xml/redir.asp?EXT={e... where {ext} was the extension.
Suggestions were vague and they only made sense with well-known filetypes.
There's a screenshot of how it looked here: https://protoweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/screen.jpg
I like your Windows postings, please don’t stop!
Can it really be called evolution? That sort of implies an improvement.
Interestingly enough, the default GTK file chooser also sucks. I notice this nowadays because I broke something in my setup but I don't know what, and the default file chooser does not remember anything I do. Prior to that I found out that for opening files via the browser, I need to have e. g. xdg-desktop-portal-gtk running. Well, my browser never told me that; it just silently failed to download anything, I could not choose any local file for file upload. I only found out eventually, but when I found out, the fix was easy, but still, the question is why such things break silently. This is simply incredibly poor engineering and design, and that happens on linux too. That way they'll never achieve linux desktop of the year. The decision makers here are just horribly bad at designing anything. The whole GTK team fell victim to this, now that it is a GNOMEy toolkit only.
When we ever get one-toolkit-that-fixes-everything (well ...), hopefully they are really allowing only mega-smart people who can think objectively and try to IMPROVE things rather than regress or take away functionality willy-nilly style (as the GNOMEy devs do).
evolution need not necessarily be an improvement, foe example mammals have a blind spot in their eyes because of the optic nerve, octopuses don't have a blind spot. but octopuses were before mammals