GitHub XP – GitHub Windows XP Theme | Hacker News Reader

GitHub XP – GitHub Windows XP Theme

github.com

209 pointsvlucas62 comments

I had hoped for something more like this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/De17PIKXUAE27W6.jpg:large

That is fantastic. Like others have commented, I can nearly feel the lack of latency, where `Create new file` would open up a small modal with a text box to copy paste/type into.

Or `Clone or download` being immediately obvious as having 2 options, SSH or HTTPS.

I feel like I could show this to a trainee and they would understand each feature in under a few minutes.

I couldn't have imagined thinking that _that_ UI was the golden age of usability...

Please someone tell me the disadvantages?

Same with mobile phones. I can remember the time when I can send a text message with phone in my pocket using just my thumb. You can type send SMS in like 5 seconds.

Today, you swipe, etc etc. takes 3 seconds til you start typing.

I wonder how kids today get away with texting in class, that was like the height of spy craft when you'd be texting a friend in your pocket while pretending to be writing notes on what the teacher was saying.

Fairly sure they just do it and don't try to be sneaky for the most part.

You know I really miss the classic Windows UI. It was easy to work out what to click and what doesn’t do anything.

It was easy to work out what to click and what doesn’t do anything.

Buttons that don't look like buttons but more like static text are a "modern" and irritating trend, but a while ago I had to use a web application which somehow managed to show all 4 combinations of "button-ness": it had buttons which looked like buttons, buttons which didn't look like buttons but static text, static text which looked like static text, and most WTF-inducing, static text which looked like buttons.

It really boggles the mind to wonder who/what decided on that, since making non-clickable text look like buttons --- complete with text that was also suitably ambiguous, e.g. "Remove" --- is something that I've never seen a rationale for.

The irony is, while it could be argued that you can mouse over controls in a web app to see whether they're clickable, this flat UI trend came from touchscreen mobile devices where "mouse over" just isn't a thing!

Yep, The last version of windows I used heavily was Win2k and for me that was the peak of their UI for people like us.

I get the rationale behind much of what followed by every time I have to use Windows 7 I wonder what the hell they where thinking, I don't dislike Win10 (from a UI perspective) quite as much.

Cinnamon/GTK (Mint-X-Sand) is still much clearer for me than Win10 though.

Yes, you would expect the armies of UX experts to be able to figure out basic consistency and discovery of components. Seems all the good UI research (using actual user experience testing) in the late 20th century has been largely forgotten.

http://prior.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/desbrief/Sullivan/... is a fun read. At the time, the very concept of a UI on a computer was itself alien to many of Microsoft's target users - they did a lot of user testing to come up with what ended up in Windows 95.

I miss the days of the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines and when Apple actually more-or-less conformed to them.

Agreed. Maybe I am just showing my age but I love the classic design. It was clean and crisp while still looking nice. Didn't waste space with massive controls, etc. I was never a fan of the Vista/7 looks. I am not super keen on the looks in Windows 10 but they are an improvement imho.

I cannot wait for GitHub 2000. Best GitHub ever.

Split GitHub into "Github Home" and "Github Enterprise" but not allow you to use both at the same time

Github for Business only supported on Windows 10 Enterprise.

GitHub Home will only work on the Edge browser.

Only allow Office365 subscribers to reset their GitHub passwords, or sometimes only outlook.com emails or occasionally only live.com.

Remove the code check-in/out feature but add new options to post photos to your project timeline

GitHub 365 Service Pack 1.

I still use the windows 98 classic theme on a windows 7 machine. much faster on the cpu. much condensed too.

and you know where to find a particular setting. now it can be in the new or in the old version or in both....

Ugh yes. That does my head in.

Also try driving the new stuff with a keyboard.

I wish more things had a UI like that: clear, simple, and with no goddamn latency.

I wish people paid more attention to things which give the appearance of latency, even when none exists.

The Windows volume control in the task bar drives me crazy. You change the volume, and after you mouse-up, this slow building chime plays and fades out. It makes changing the volume feel so slow, especially if you're quickly adjusting it multiple times to dial it in.

It's such a small detail, but it could be so much simpler and feel so much faster.

That's why you use the mouse wheel or mute system sounds. :)

> You change the volume, and after you mouse-up, this slow building chime plays and fades out. It makes changing the volume feel so slow

You click the mouse once at a desired volume level, and get a positive confirmation. I don't understand how this makes the changing of volume to be perceived as slow... Okay, now I see, the new sound effect in Windows 10...

> but it could be so much simpler and feel so much faster.

e.g. Gnome desktop.

So true with the latency. I set up an NT4 VM with word 97 a while back just for a nostalgia trip. Holy shit that is fast. How did they make windows 10 such a chunk of gammon in comparison. Literally no productivity difference has been gained between then and now, just some cheese moved. 21 years of nothing!

I mean, of course it's going to be fast, you're running it on a modern computer. Try my Pentium with 16 MB RAM, that thing would churn forever.

Windows NT "required" a minimum of 32 megabytes of memory back then. So that would definitely be a pretty bad experience

According to Wikipedia, that could go as high as 128 megs for "heavy 3D applications"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4.0

> Holy shit that is fast.

10 seconds later... BSOD

You're thinking of the 9x kernel. NT was pretty good.

I had an internal NT box up from 1998 to 2001 at the time. It was incredibly reliable.

What is this? It’s very well done.

Edit: Found a twitter thread. Probably a photoshop mock: https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1003593821723267072?s=...

From that same thread, someone got pretty close a user style: https://userstyles.org/styles/160991/github-windows-classic

Now what is that?

The only thing missing is the warning at the top that says not all features will work with your old version of Chrome.

How do I know? Because I'm still one of the last people on Win XP at work. FML.

> Because I'm still one of the last people on Win XP at work

Wow, if you are in the US you should file a complaint with OSHA: https://www.osha.gov/workers/file_complaint.html

Is using an outdated version of windows grounds for a complaint?

I don't know much about the OSHA standards, but I thought it was primarily about the safety of the lives of the workers. What part of their standard does old OS violate?

Using XP is bad for your (mental) health, and if you try to store sensitive information on it then it's also bad for your social and financial health too.

If you pay you can still get support and security updates. It’s just outrageously expensive.

You must be great at parties

We have to use it sometimes because nobody can figure out how to get our Delphi 7 environment running on Windows 7.

I feel your pain.

I've installed Delphi 7 on my Windows 7 at the time, ran really good and kept developing code as normal.

Then eventually that same laptop got upgraded to Windows 10 and this same Delphi kept working as expected (compile, edit, ..).

Maybe your colleagues can try to install it with the UAC disabled?

I think it has something to do with the 3rd party libs we're using.

Have you tried to compile with Lazarus/Freepascal?

I did a while back, but I don't remember what the problem was.

Sorry about that, but Chrome auto updates for almost everyone. If you're using an old and insecure version you should know you'll experience problems.

Chrome can be locked to ancient versions using an AD policy, there's probably not much they can do about it (except qutting their job).

Almost. Except compatibility breaks with old libraries - which is the case. (I'm okay with "no more updates for you, XP is older than coal now"; just don't pretend that updates are even possible there)

This is the best take on the GitHub / Microsoft hysteria that I have seen. Thank you.

Fun idea. I hated that color scheme back in the day. Fischer-Price computing anyone?

At the time it seemed like a really poor and ugly attempt to rip-off Apple's OS X Aqua design. IIRC the betas had a really nice theme called "Watercolor" that I still miss.

Although looking back at both designs now in 2018, those OS X pinstripes and heavy drop shadows feel way more dated than Luna's Fisher-Priceness.

Yeah. I used the classic Windows theme back in the XP days.

Memories.

Off-topic question about VSCode - it is Electron based, which was released in 2013. Now, Microsoft had/has team in Zurich, Switzerland - they've specially opened the office to hire Erich Gamma (of Eclipse and DP fame). The team led by Gamma was working on VSCode predecessor (I think), in 2011... So what happened there? Did they abandon most of the stuff and switched over Electron later?

The project was called Monaco.

It was a massive success, and has since been open sourced here: https://github.com/Microsoft/monaco-editor

Visual Studio Code joins the Monaco editor with an Electron-based environment to provide desktop text editing. That's about as opposite as abandoned as you can get.

Plus, Monaco powers more than just Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Team Services and the Azure portal uses Monaco as editor of choice in a large number of places. Monaco powers online REPL/sandboxes such as Typescript's playground [1]. IE10+ and Edge Dev Tools are powered by Monaco (and the minimized gunk of the average random webpage sources was an early impetus for Monaco to have much of the performance we see in VS Code today).

[1] https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/index.html

I think godbolt.org uses it as well.

Yes.

The teams at Microsoft working on VSCode are in Zurich and Seattle (AFAIK).

Interesting. So the original plan was to create only an online ("in the cloud") editor?

The spacing is all off. I get it's in jest, but it's really just not quite there. Especially the search.

Looks great! Love the idea.

I'll buy the extension off you for $5/install count? I promise to wait at least a day before bundling malware, since you hit front page of HN there should be some great targets.

/Sarcasm obviously.

But there's just no way i'm installing something that can "read and change my data on github.com". Chrome extension permission granularity is just not sufficient. Especially since data exfiltration is possible using CSS only (e.g. https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/05/28/large-scale-analysis-of-... )

>permission granularity is just not sufficient

This is a careful balance between extensions being almost completely useless and extensions being able to take over the whole browser...

Just read the source code if you don't trust it.

Edit: it seems this extension has no javascript code, just stylesheets that get applied by manifest.json. Seems this actually could be a good spot for more granular permissions. "change style information on *.github.com"

> Just read the source code if you don't trust it.

No, that doesn't really work for Chrome extensions - they can silently auto-update, and will no longer match the published source.

It's just barely possible to run the extension directly from the source code - you either need to put up with popup warnings every single time you open the browser, or, need to install an entirely separate developer version of Chrome.

Certainly most people here aren't doing that.

> change style information on .github.com

It would be an improvement, but it turns out stylesheets can be used for malicious data exfiltration anyway (see parent).

>No, that doesn't really work for Chrome extensions - they can silently auto-update, and will no longer match the published source.

As much as I hate Google, this is exactly how most people use free software linux distributions. The only difference is the barrier of entry for new/updated software.

>need to install an entirely separate developer version of Chrome

Heh, I'd probably expect anyone who audits all of the software they use to already be using chromium.

The salient difference is that bribing Google or Red Hat is practically impossible (a hypothetical billion-dollar exercise reserved for state actors); whereas bribing Chrome extension developers is definitely not hypothetical, maybe even commonplace (e.g. some friends were hit by https://www.ghacks.net/2013/12/26/hoverzooms-malware-controv... ).

For high-value targets, like full access to a software developer's private github repos, there's definitely an economic incentive to do this.

Then install it yourself? It's open source software. Get over yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com