Windows 98 Icons (2015)

I even skinned my XP with theme that was most close to the original - sadly, on Windows it was always a hard task and in few spots GUI was falling back into 9x widgets, not mention the usual problem with icons and other resource files.

Exactly my experience. The first time I installed Linux when I was around 15 I was surprised how modern, "sharp" and professional everything looked compared to Windows XP.

(The default Windows XP design was really the beginning of a downward curve for Windows designs. Windows 98 looked like a tool, Windows XP looked like a toy, which is a shame because Windows XP was a vastly superior (and in my experience ridiculously stable) OS. I always used the "classic" Win 98 design).

Aqua is (was†) Mac OS X, Mac OS 8~9 was Platinum.

† While the current design continues to be called "Aqua" I personally consider the last iteration of Aqua to be Mavericks. While Cheetah, Puma, and Jaguar had the filling lines, Panther and Tiger had brushed metal, and the brief touchdown with skeuomorphism in Lion and Mountain Lion, they overall consistently carried the colourful glossy-watery "lick-it-candy" theme throughout - including icons - all the way, until Yosemite happens... Then it gets all silky with frosted glass, desaturated colours, and muted gradients, which just does not have the Aqua feel to me.

https://www.mailvita.com/kb/list-of-all-versions-of-mac-os-f...

The main thing about windows icon (and overall) "design" as can clearly be seen in TLA is how ridiculously inconsistent it all is. Perspective, shape, colors, level-of-detail, layout, style. It's mind boggling that no-one hit the brakes in Redmond, hired an intern, just to polish out the worst offenders.

I mean, I get the complexity and business flows in place that produce this terrible mess. But in the end the software is packaged as one thing.

Is it their stronghold on the market (monopoly) that makes they can afford not to care? Or did their customers really not care (I mean, I did, and it was one of many things that made me fall in love with Linux back then)

It is interesting how iconography links to timeless design. Function and appearance have a way of coexisting in good design so the "idea" of something gets into semiotics.

Disk storage is a timeless concept. It's absent now but will no doubt return in some new guise on the next wave of materials science and storage tech.

The pen is timeless too.

Perhaps the weird one is the classic phone handset. My daughter who never saw one except maybe on a cartoon, instantly knew what to do with an old 1970s rotary I was hacking. The design "reaches out" and suggests its usage. Partly that's our monkey brains that sees tools and uses in everything.

I think we have precedent in the iconography of specialist occupations that have already existed in preindustrial times. The various brewing implements that adorn the labels of many breweries, the geometry implements that now only live on in freemasonry.. They all have names, but those names are lost to everybody but those who enjoy accumulating knowledge of old-timey things. Baffled, yes. But the world already is full of that kind of echoes from the past, it's not like someone is confused by them. Those who might consider a box of 3.5" a box of old save icons grew up with those save icons, it's the world they know.

And when I these I don't mean only the specific apps and file types logos but also the icons which could be placed on the toolbars, icons used in the dialogs etc.

https://archive.org/details/paint.net-macintosh-icons

There's a working archive of them here: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/

They're real masterpieces. 256 colour pixel art, with some colours palette cycling to create animation by using the right pixels in the right place. But then he also changes the palette to create different times of day.

Some of them have rain or snow and the particles appear to move smoothly over the various parts of the background. Carefully switching the palette index not just for each bit of movement but also using a different section of the palette each time a snowflake transitions to pass over a different-coloured background layer.

There's a pool with a shimmering reflection! There's an animated aurora borealis! There's underwater scenes, oceans, fires, all animated via fixed palette cycling only!

And none of it looks forced, it all looks beautifully natural. You can open up the "Options" tab to see the palette and hover over the colours to see where they're used.

http://16colo.rs/

Here is better cross-browser compatible version with sharp "pixels" for Chrome/Edge:

    data:text/html;verbatim,<body>
    <script>document.body.style.setProperty('--dpr',devicePixelRatio);</script>
    <img src="https://win98icons.alexmeub.com/css_sprites.png"
    style="background-color:grey;
    image-rendering:-webkit-optimize-contrast;
    image-rendering:pixelated;
    image-rendering:crisp-edges;
    width:calc(1/var(--dpr)*2168px*5);">

(And welcome to peculiarities of front-end web development. It is the year 2024 and there are still CSS level 3 modules that are not implemented reliably in latest browser versions, apparently.)

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-rende...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MwVjEL1dNWg/maxresdefault.jpg

I've seen some legacy fixed size games in tiny windows. If hate the os to be like that. My vision isn't good enough.

Hey, Chicago95! My favorite XFCE theme!

https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

  [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowsMetrics]
  "Shell Icon BPP"="16"

Thanks for the trip down memory lane too. It’s been years since I’ve last thought about moricons.dll. Possibly even decades.

For those who haven’t heard of it: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/6705/what...

Edit: looks like it is still available https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moricons.dll

- Some of them are the same icon but the slightly more modern counterpart (ie where more colours were supported

- Some of them are the same icon but in different states (eg empty recycle bin vs non-empty recycle bin)

- Some are actually intended to be used as crude animations (eg the 4 icons of magnifying glass over the computer are actually just 4 frames of an animation)

- Plus pixels were "bigger" back then so you had to do more with less. But thankfully subtle changes were also more noticeable (again, because pixels were "bigger")