as long as it has trumpet winsock
https://computernewb.com/wiki/How_to_browse_the_web_on_very_...
It was a 16 bit system (it could run in "Enhanced Mode" which involves 32 bit protected mode, but in reality Windows itself, and the applications, were still 16 bit).
That means the resource constraints were very real. Even if you had a lot of actual memory in your machine, the memory that was actually available for "general purpose" was effectively a few hundred kilobytes. There was also the notion of finite (and very generically-named) "system resources", and you could see in the "About" box how many percent of those you had free. Once they were gone, you were in trouble:
USER.EXE and GDI.EXE each have a data segment (that is, heap) limited to 64K. The 8086/80286 platform architecture imposes this 64K limit. Program Manager checks the percentage of free heap space for both USER.EXE and GDI.EXE. It then reports the smaller of the two percentages.[1]
Since it was not based on paging, to accommodate the very limited memory, entire segments could be swapped out, or even relocated, within the address space. As a programmer, that meant dealing with stuff like "locking pointers" so Windows wouldn't move your data segment under you. As a user, that could mean general slowness.
It was firmly based on DOS. So many problems that you had in DOS, drivers or whatnot, would exist in Windows as well.
There were better systems at the time that you could wish yourself back to, some number of them based on UNIX in some way or other.
But Windows 3.11 had really pretty icons. The prettiest, in my mind.
[1] https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/Patches/ftp.microsoft.com/MISC/KB/...
See Win 95 resolution change workflow.
This was 20 years ago. A lot of knowledge was lost since then.
If your content is so poor that a change of colors can make people leave, then perhaps your content is not worth having.
But if the user sets the system to hot dog stand, the apps should be hot dog stand. If the user wants the system text font to be wingdings, they're in for a nasty time, but that doesn't mean an app should force a different font
After all, the developer always knows best and all users are helpless children who need to be forced to conform and comply. Who cares what the user thinks or wants so long as we keep that sweet, sweet engagement.
It's not that users are helpless, but that they just don't want to spend their time dealing with stuff they don't want to. Users like it when things "just work."
What you're advocating is protecting the user from themselves, which is antithetic to the entire ethos of the hacker.
Yes, you as a developer shouldn't fuck up the user's setup. But if the user fucks it up on their own? Then that's on them. Don't limit the power users because you want to infantilize the casual users.
But that doesn't explain taking away options. Users who don't want their time with this stuff would probably not use the customization options in the first place.
Also, the term "deliver value" has been badly tainted after too many companies have used it as an euphemism for "extracting value".
It's the same non-logic that advertisers use: Ads are both a service for the viewer, informing them of amazing opportunities, but also somehow the viewers must be forced into consuming that service.
I'm deeply skeptical of situations where people have to be forced into something "for their own good".
I wasn't aware engagement maximisation is the reason we don't get customization options anymore, but it makes perfect sense.
No one used to care about this because it was at the discretion of the user whether they want to keep using the app or not. Whereas today, it's the company objective to keep the user in the app as much as possible.
[0] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Community-Blog/Introducing-...
No, they don't. It's my system, and the look should be what I want it to be, period. What designers actually need to do is learn to respect their users, even when they disagree with the user's choices.
Some people like having ridiculously long fake nails that make it difficult to do their jobs (i'm thinking some checkout clerks I've seen who can't properly push any of the keys on their terminal), but it's their choice.
Why would someone changing app colors to ones they specifically chose make them use the app less? There is no logic in that statement.
What is actually happening is designers are forcing non-native controls, in part because web technologies have infested every corner of software development these days. Unsurprisingly, those non-native widgets break in a plethora of ways when the system diverges even marginally from the OS defaults.
And instead of those designers admitting that they fucked up, they instead double down on their contempt for their users.
Also, can we please not call desktop applications “apps” in response to an article about an OS that predates smartphones by several decades.
Because I loved the Fluorescent theme.
[1] - E Is for Ecstacy - BBC Everyman Documentary https://youtu.be/jyrhcjRc3TU?si=Qn9qG2z8wQzD-llJ&t=812
[0] https://retro.swarm.cz/20170331/windows-31-running-on-ibm-ps...
https://imgur.com/gallery/every-windows-3-1-theme-SsVYqM1
at least half were painfully ugly
My sway setup is everything as all black as I can get but with any accents as small and bright - neon green and eye bleeding magenta - as possible. So Fluorescent speaks to me.
I remember as a kid using 3.11 and win 95 and cycling through the themes, trying them all out for a day or two to decide which I wanted to use. You know, important decisions. Anyway, in an eternal black mark on my character I didn't even consider Hot Dog Stand.
Default text in the terminal is green, and if I select it with a mouse it's magenta. It's more of a "terminal" vibe than the win 3.1 Fluorescent vibe. I said that because they share garish colors.
Also, I'm always on the lookout for even more minimalist graphics to use in my config, if anyone has hyper-minimal things they like about theirs...
At the end of the day, usability shouldn't trump fun. If I find it's less usable, I can switch back.
For almost five years.
I actually finally TOLD them, "you never actually decided, so I picked the colors to be deliberately a little obnoxious so you would actually get off the pot and decide."
They were PISSED.
Not long after, I came up with a way for users (not committees of the managers of users, who usually know nothing) to choose their own preferred colors, and over 80% of them never used that feature and left the garish original I had pulled out of my butt in 1999, because now they were used to it.
(It was technically possible to get a bright background color on PCs in text mode, but very few programs did that.)
And we liked it!
emperorcezar•1mo ago