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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

I cannot wait for GitHub 2000. Best GitHub ever.

GitHub 365 Service Pack 1.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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!

> 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.

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

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.

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?

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