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28 years ago, Windows 95 entered general availability (August 24th 1995) (en.wikipedia.org)

submitted 1 year ago by videodrome@lemmy.capebreton.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.capebreton.social/post/347724

Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995, almost three months after the release of Windows NT 3.51.

Windows 95 is the first version of Microsoft Windows to include taskbar, start button, and accessing the internet. Windows 95 merged Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows products, and featured significant improvements over its predecessor, most notably in the graphical user interface (GUI) and in its simplified "plug-and-play" features. There were also major changes made to the core components of the operating system, such as moving from a mainly cooperatively multitasked 16-bit architecture to a 32-bit preemptive multitasking architecture, at least when running only 32-bit protected mode applications.

Accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign,Windows 95 introduced numerous functions and features that were featured in later Windows versions, and continue in modern variations to this day, such as the taskbar, notification area, and the "Start" button. It is considered to be one of the biggest and most important products in the personal computing industry.

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[–] mindbleach@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Seriously though, this is the first properly good UI for a desktop computer. Mac OS (or I guess Macintosh OS at the time) was okay, but reliant on the global menu and weird drop-downs. Windows kept everything self-contained. Even multi-window programs tended to use the "multiple document interface," i.e., windows inside windows. Tabs weren't really a thing yet.

It also crashed if you looked at it funny and had the antivirus capabilities of warm cheese. But there's damn good reasons Windows 7 was the same experience, extended, rather than replaced. It's more-or-less what I style Linux to look like. And in light of that I'm kinda pissed off any OS ever struggles to remain responsive, when this relic ran smoothly on one stick of RAM that's smaller than my CPU's cache.

[–] irdc@derp.foo 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mac OS (…) was okay, but reliant on the global menu and weird drop-downs.

See Fitt’s law for why the Mac’s menu bar is the way it is.

[–] mindbleach@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thoroughly familiar with it; don't care. The global menu has always been goofy because of the invisible relation to some open window. Usually a small window floating out in middle of the desktop, because Mac OS took forever to adopt any concept of "maximize." I'm still not sure they do it right.

[–] irdc@derp.foo 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nowadays macOS maximises like Windows does. Whether that’s “doing it right” is something else entirely.

[–] Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Does it? I never pay attention to what version work has me running but hitting the maximize button is still exclusive full screen as effectively a new desktop

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[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

In its basic form, Fitts's law says that targets a user has to hit should be as big as possible.

Dear god, my biggest beef with using a smart phone is that UI designers 1) love to have tiny buttons for shit, and 2) the tappable areas for those buttons are almost never made larger than their tiny graphics, so it's a bitch to actually tap them.

I used to be a mobile app developer, and when I wrote apps by myself I would always expand the tappable areas so they were easy to hit with fat fingers. My last job was working for a huge cable company (maybe the name rhymes with "bombast") and whenever I expanded the tappable area of a tiny button the UI designers would pitch a fit and insist that that not be done. Management would agree with them on the grounds that expanding the tappable area would require too much time to implement - and then they'd order me to spend even more time un-implementing it.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Something that irritates me in desktop design is, there's a clickable icon. There's no box around it to represent a button, just the icon on a blank background. You move your mouse towards the icon. When you get close to the icon, a box appears around it. You take this to mean "this object will be interacted with when you click the mouse." You click the mouse. Nothing is achieved. You have to move the mouse into the actual borders of the icon, it's just that now icons get visibly excited that you might pick them.

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[–] scottywh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I find this problem to be especially pronounced in the exit buttons on in game ads.

[–] Kahlenar@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Certainly windows took inspiration from the apple button in the upper left, but changed a few things so they wouldn't get caught copying.

[–] mindbleach@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

There's only so many corners.

[–] snaggen@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think they actually tried to take MS to court, but lost since they had stolen the ideas from Xerox in the first place.

[–] scottywh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

The movie Pirates of Silicon Valley does a great job at illustrating the basics of the story.

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[–] FederatedSaint@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

It really was a game changer. I remember the excitement of getting it for the first time after using windows 3.1.

[–] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The full screen app contained in a single window was great! I hated the Mac eat fo many windows floating around. My ADHD was so overwhelmed by all the tiny windows instead of a clear one.

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[–] comedy@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I remember the install CD had the Weezer “Buddy Holly” video on it. It felt pretty fancy

[–] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And "Good Times" by Edie Brickell, but for some reason nobody ever remembers that lol

[–] Diplomjodler@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that was so cool. Watching a whole music video on a PC. Truly revolutionary.

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[–] ManosTheHandsOfFate@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I remember installing it on my PC using a large stack of 3.5" floppy disks. It was great - a big upgrade from Windows 3.11.

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[–] Luci@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I still have my Windows 95 "Start me up" Pogs!

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You mean those little discs that you throw a bigger, heaver disc on top of? You've gotta share a pic sometime

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[–] imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And this marked the very first and last time I felt a sense of genuine excitement about an OS upgrade.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You weren't stoked for XP? XP is the OS that got me into computing. Before XP computers were a novelty to me. When XP came out they finally seemed powerful enough to accomplish cool things with.

[–] NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Launch of Windows 7 was pretty exciting too. Felt very modern, especially with the updated Aero UI.

[–] imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I learned a lot with XP because it required constant trouble shooting. Was a buggy mess imo. I was more excited about hardware advancements and cool games at that time.

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[–] Yewb@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I had to upgrade for the warcraft 2 level editor what a time to be alive!

[–] mycatiskai@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

My dad barely knew how to run things in windows 3.1 but he still regrets the day he installed windows 95 because it was all downhill from there when it came to him knowing what was going on.

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