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It was clear, clean and understandable.

Buttons looked like buttons.

Windows (which have frames), looked like windows.

And there was no distracting design elements.

I remember those times and there were a lot if windows that did not look like windows and buttons that did not look like buttons. Not in the apps provided by the OS itself, but in third-party software. It was the time of wild experiments, especially in software created by enthusiasts. We just tend to forget this stuff

And crazy themes I had the matrix one with the "dodge this" sound instead of a ping... good times

It's not like the world was perfect before; it's just that it's gotten even worse. The lack of consistency has spread, to the point there barely is any.

Application developers often had a lot of crazy (and bad) ideas, but at least Windows itself was consistent. But then those crazy, bad ideas started affecting Microsoft, and then you could make the Windows Media Player look like eyeballs.

"Skinning" apps was a good idea in theory, but in practice, it never offered anything better than the default of Windows 2000 and earlier eras. Now you can't change anything in the Windows UI except a few colors.

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