I will say, Windows 95 was pretty great, I identify with the Microsoft customer in the hero image. I'm gathering notes to write a GUI toolkit which only makes well-formed Windows 95-style UIs.
Windows 95 was great not because of the icons, colors, or anything like that. It was great because the UI was consistent and intuitive. There were a few weird things in there like the briefcase but for the most part it was just enough UI and software to be really effective without getting in the way.
Windows 95 and its immediate successors had a lot of problems regarding stability, memory usage, performance in certain cases, etc. That and the comparison with the NT OS line is a separate discussion however. What is important about Windows 95 was the design of the GUI. At the time, it was a huge leap forward in desktop computing.
Even though I jumped on the Mac OS X bandwagon from the very first moment in 2001 and was happy to leave the Windows world behind, the fact remains that for a few years time in the mid 90s, Microsoft showed a strong ability to design GUIs that were easy to use, relatively consistent, and flexible enough to suit a large array of first and third-party application designs. It's a shame that, IMHO, Windows XP took things in a highly negative direction after that, and Microsoft never fully recovered. With the possible exception of Windows 7, every OS release since XP has been a mishmash of competing ideas and confusing discrepancies, and macOS has continually outpaced Windows in usability.
I still hold out hope that there's a solid future for Windows when it comes to UX/UI design, if only because I want macOS to have real competition on that front.
It's hard to remember, but even though Windows 3.11 was extremely dominant at the time, it was by no means assured that Windows 95 would be the success that it was. The very first version missed wildly in some big ways (MSN was a folder integrated into the desktop, for example, and no TCP/IP support [*Edit: yes there was - I misremembered.]), but the core, underlying redesign of the GUI was so profoundly good it propelled Microsoft into a new level of ubiquity. Compare it to other GUIs at the time, like CDE, IBM's Presentation Manager, or even Mac OS 8 and there's no comparison. Windows 95 solidified Microsoft's dominance, but could just as easily eroded it had they dropped the ball.
Even though I've used a Mac daily for the past decade or so, I still miss the task bar, and window-oriented GUI of Windows. I still get frustrated on OSX when I minimize a window and have to hunt around for it. I wouldn't switch back because of the underlying crap that is the Windows OS and file system, but I still miss the interface.
Edit: Found this fantastic PDF "Chicago Reviewers Guide" which goes over all the new stuff in Win95. So much stuff I had forgotten - TrueType fonts, Plug and Play, registry settings, right-click properties, long file names... Basically everything that makes Windows what it is today.
Back then about just anything was better looking than Windows 95. OS/2 was slick. Mac computers had a very enjoyable UI. SGI machines had a very good looking UI.
But people mostly only knew Windows 95, so that's what they remember.
* that Windows 95 was the first GUI I used for any extended period of time and that I will naturally think it's the best one for this reason, for the same reason people tend to think things they liked when they were teenagers peaked when they were teenagers; and
* that Windows 95 really did rule - to repurpose Hoare, "not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors"
...and those two could fight each other all day.
Taking off the rose-tinted glasses, I might miss the UI, but I definitely don't miss how unstable it was. 25 years on I can still rattle off a Windows 95 product key off the top of my head as a consequence of reinstalling it so often.
I'm so harsh with Windows 95 here because back then I found out about other desktops (e.g. on Unix) that had better UI. Several workspaces, ability to drag windows not only by grabbing the title bar, clicking the scroll bar to the scroll place you need (instead of having to drag it all the way there), launching programs by other means than a non ending hierarchy of menus. Not to mention that anything not Windows was more stable. Also Unix/Linux was multi user and solid enough to run read services on the same machine (even if it was the same little piece of junk your Windows 98 had come with in the first place).
Exploring the world beyond Windows felt like finally seeing how the real pros do it. That is why I absolutely can't understand the starry eyed reverence people have for sorry "OSes" like Windows 95/98.
TLDR: Windows 95/98 wasn't the pinncacle of UI even when it came out, so it definitely isn't today.
You have missed Windows ME between XP and 98, which was so awful people don't remember it anymore. For a revolutionary product, Windows 95 wasn't that bad.
Windows 95 was the third best Windows after XP and 98 (which was really win95SP3). It was a big leap over Windows 3.11, and evolved to XP quite nicely.
Too bad the whole line was an unfortunate 20 year dead end detour from secure, multi-user, networked computing.
Windows 95 was a major step into OSes too. I remember how well done the UI was. It became silly in 98 and then on XP with crazy design styles that. I don't know if the original design team left Middle Earth, but in two years they've experimented too much and Windows became normless while Apple maintained guidelines with better hand.
Windows 95 is probably the oldest OS easily usable by young people. It's fascinating because:
- It has established strong foundations about Windows UI. The Menu/Toolbar couple, scrollbars with a relative size, 3D buttons, start menu, toolbar...
- The gap between Windows 3.1 (1992) and Windows 95 is insane.
- It was beautifully coherent. Today, Windows 10 seems like a mess with different UI pieces from different universes: Modern UI, Windows Vista/7 era utilities, Windows XP/2003 config things and some older gems. Fun thing: open a Word document from a pendrive and unplug the pendrive, MS Word will show an error box from Win95 era, asking to insert the floppy in the drive.
- When booting a VM or an old computer with classic Windows I feel "at home". Our first family computer when I was a child was a Pentium II / Windows 98. I have strong reflexes with this kind of UI and I'm faster with classic window and menus compared to my phone or a tablet with modern touch interface.
Windows 95 didn't really offer much in the way of anything over Windows 3.11 for the everyday user. I remember everyone complaining about how it used 2x as much RAM and made their 486/25 and 386/40 systems unusable.
Sure, the interface was a little bit better, but Program Manager wasn't terrible. The 'desktop' is probably one of the worst UI concepts developed. Multi-tasking was a little better, but 16-bit apps could still wreck stuff, and the same went for memory protection. It crashed just as damn much.
There was nothing like the hypetrain for Windows 95 ever before -- and the only thing that might compare after was the release of the iPhone. There was a guy in Software Etc. whose whole job was to stand at the door and remind people that Windows 95 was coming out on August 24th.
Time for computer enthusiasts could be divided into two eras: before and after Windows 95. Before Windows 95, computers were for nerds and office drones only, pretty much. After Windows 95, awareness and curiosity about computers among normies increased phenomenally. That's how much effort Microsoft put into raising Windows awareness, and how much it paid off.
reply