The true story of the Windows 3.1 'Hot Dog Stand' color scheme

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/windows/windows-3-1-included-a-red-and-yellow-hot-dog-stand-color-scheme-so-garish-it-was-long-assumed-to-be-a-joke-so-i-tracked-down-the-original-designer-to-get-the-true-story/

88•naves•3h ago

Comments

emperorcezar•2h ago

This brings up so many memories

blibble•1h ago

I'd rather use 3.1 with the hot dog scheme vs. windows 11...

as long as it has trumpet winsock

fsiefken•1h ago

I agree, and Calmira LFN 3.3 and Microsoft Office 4.3 Would Notepad++ work? What would you use as a graphical www browser? I mean even with win32s and modern ssl support somehow built-in it'd be challenge.

xnx•1h ago

Back when users picked the UI colors for the apps instead of the apps picking for the users.

charcircuit•1h ago

People can self sabotage by choosing a bad theme, and then they engage with the app less or even churn. Designers need to be careful to not give people rope for them to hang themselves with.

hulitu•1h ago

> Designers need to be careful to not give people rope for them to hang themselves with.

See Win 95 resolution change workflow.

This was 20 years ago. A lot of knowledge was lost since then.

reaperducer•1h ago

and then they engage with the app less or even churn.

If your content is so poor that a change of colors can make people leave, then perhaps your content is not worth having.

charcircuit•36m ago

The colors is part of the content of the product. And it's not that it is 100% more likely for someone to leave sooner, but that it increases the probability that people leave sooner.

toast0•1h ago

Certainly that's a good reason to force a legible version of settings, and the path to settings...

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

charcircuit•33m ago

The issue with this thinking is that it's easier for people to quit using the product than to figure out how to fix the font. You can't beat the simplicity of doing nothing, so you need to avoid getting into this state in the first place.

estimator7292•25m ago

Gotta keep users engaged in your app, right? Keep them onboard even if that means removing all their choices. I mean, should we even allow users to uninstall apps?

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.

charcircuit•11m ago

If your users are not engaging with your app, you can't deliver user value to them. If you are unable to provide value to their lives because they happened to accidently changed a font that is an unfortunate circumstance where the user is losing out on value they could have had.

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."

xg15•31m ago

> and then they engage with the app less or even churn

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.

bigstrat2003•28m ago

> Designers need to be careful to not give people rope for them to hang themselves with.

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.

bji9jhff•22m ago

In practice lot of applications hard-coded some elements' color while following the theme for other elements, making dark theme unusable because you end up with black text imposed by the developers over the black background you choose for your theme, and other similar issues.

quotemstr•8m ago

As much as we love to hate on Apple's more user-hostile policies, it's only due to Apple's fiat that we've been able to claw back the smallest bit of user theme control --- light and dark mode --- from the "don't theme my app" people.

wesfenlon•1h ago

Thanks for sharing! I was pleased I was able to track down Virginia and she had a clear memory of how Hot Dog Stand came to be.

jmkni•1h ago

It was a fun read, cheers

caminanteblanco•1h ago

Thanks for an awesome writeup! I've been reading your articles on PCGamer since highschool, and they've always been my favorite of the bunch!

noveltyaccount•57m ago

I'm so glad that there's room for this kind of investigative journalism in this day and age. Kudos!

cadr•1h ago

I'm amused she said they included it "in case somebody out there liked ugly bright red and yellow" and that "the 'Fluorescent' theme was also pretty ugly, but it didn't have a catchy name, so I've never heard anything about it."

Because I loved the Fluorescent theme.

stuaxo•55m ago

Flourescent looks so of it's time, it fits right into an age of acid house, where you could go hang out in the hologram shop [1].

[1] - E Is for Ecstacy - BBC Everyman Documentary https://youtu.be/jyrhcjRc3TU?si=Qn9qG2z8wQzD-llJ&t=812

MontyCarloHall•1h ago

Unlike the Hot Dog Stand theme, the "Plasma Power Saver" theme also featured in the article actually was function over form, not just an aesthetic choice (or lack thereof). It was to reduce burn-in on the plasma displays of old portable computers, e.g. here [0].

[0] https://retro.swarm.cz/20170331/windows-31-running-on-ibm-ps...

breppp•1h ago

This made me search and find this, screenshots of every win 3.11 theme:

https://imgur.com/gallery/every-windows-3-1-theme-SsVYqM1

at least half were painfully ugly

skydhash•53m ago

Still more readable than what Apple has released lately.

pmdr•36m ago

We've now seemed to have invented glass, but in some kind of a parodic form.

Duanemclemore•18m ago

Legend.

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.

0cf8612b2e1e•15m ago

Do you have a screenshot? That sounds unusably terrible to me, but whatever floats your boat.

grandchild•15m ago

As a kid I actually used the theme on my first hand-me-down. As the regular theme. And I remember chosing it because it was fun! It made my computer more fun.

At the end of the day, usability shouldn't trump fun. If I find it's less usable, I can switch back.

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