What is Frutiger Aero, the aesthetic taking over from Y2K? | Hacker News Reader

What is Frutiger Aero, the aesthetic taking over from Y2K?

dazeddigital.com

36 pointssegasaturn14 comments

Ah, the time when GPUs got fast enough that desktop compositors all became 3D and GPU-accelerated, and every mainstream OS decided to have cool effects to show off what they could do.

Windows Vista and 7 running Windows Aero, with its transparency, shiny bits, and Flip 3D (Windows + Tab).

Mac OS X Snow Leopard running Aqua, with its rounded buttons and blue scroll bars that were 'lickable globs of Crest Berrylicious Toothpaste Gel'.

And then Apple took a road-roller and flattened every UI element they could starting from OS X Lion and iOS 7; Microsoft and Google soon followed suit.

I unironically miss the late 2000s-aesthetic and human design of operating systems and UIs. But I'll concede that Web has got a lot better.

You've got it completely backwards. Microsoft went all in on flat with their Windows Phone interface circa 2010. iOS 7 was literally years later, and arguably overcorrected.

It was perhaps also the best flat-UI we ever saw.

Don't forget Compiz, with all the fancy effects like desktop cubes or wobbly windows. Even Linux was not free from the 3D desktop.

Linux was first with all these things and went way harder than anyone. Did Windows or MacOS ever got burning windows? I don’t think so, pal. :)

Late 90s Linux desktops were already crazy and included windows backgrounds with anime waifus before they were cool. (Never were imo but I don’t want to get lynched )

Sort of unrelated but I love the GNOME extension Burn My Windows, it brings that burning windows feature to modern GNOME and it has so much customizability and so many different animations

You give Apple too much credit, and Microsoft too little.

The common conception is that Microsoft created the “flat UI” thing wholly from scratch, it was seen as totally original and unique at the time, it took no obvious immediate influences from contemporary software design trends.

Though not contemporary, Windows 3.1 and Windows 2.0 beg to differ, as do Motif and Athena Widgets.

I think the Windows Phone was the first from Microsoft with the flat UI. While it didn't take off, I remember a friend who had a Windows phone and thinking how radical and different its UI was.

It's interesting to ponder which inconsequential aspects of modern life will become emblematic of the 2020s in 20 years' time.

I would not have predicted the magenta palm trees of Miami Vice as being representative of the '80s back in the day, and as someone who always switched off the themes in XP and Vista, it surprises me that people are nostalgic for them!

I really liked The Windows 7 theme and kept it on on every computer that wasn't a gaming PC, because I'm gaming computers. I want to squeez every last frame. But my dad always turned off the theme on all of his computers because it reminded him of Windows 98, and frankly, I am very sad that you cannot just get the old windows 98 theme in Windows today as a default feature. I know they're a third party apps that do that, but I wish it was still just a feature that they had because it really wouldn't add that much development time. I kind of am just over it with all of the extra bullshit in Windows, like I want an operating system with a file browser and a built-in web browser that I probably will never use, I don't want telemetry, I don't want recommended files, I don't want widgets, I don't want a news center on the side of my computer, I don't want any baked in AI bullshit.

I wish I could literally just get Windows 7 with all of the security and performance and compatibility improvements of Windows 11. Also a functioning search bar, which would be really nice.

It's unusual to have an article about a Frutiger font with no mention of the namesake typographer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Frutiger

I turned on high contrast mode which helps a lot in terms of usability. The moment I go back, everything just insanely unclear.

The CARI site is such a gem https://cari.institute/aesthetics/frutiger-aero

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