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zthrowaway

35 minutes ago

The thing about back then that was so amazing is the amount of personalization you had with your desktop environment. Windows 95/98 had different skins/themes you could use. Winamp and many other apps allowed skins. You used to be able to make your computing experience your own. We've lost that and really need to get it back. There's the ability to do this with Linux DE's of course, but that's not enough.

cosmic_cheese

3 minutes ago

On the Mac side of the fence, Kaleidoscope schemes were even more capable in terms of deep desktop theming, giving the artist full control of just about everything (window chrome, controls, icons, fonts, desktop pattern/picture). Even better, they didn’t require any installation step: double-clicking a scheme file was all that was needed to radically transform your desktop. Nothing matches its capability and ease of use even today.

Artists did some wild stuff with it. A few fun examples:

https://macthemes.garden/themes/c7005c70d044-Wrecked-Angles/

https://macthemes.garden/themes/2852d54a73a3-Windows-98/

https://macthemes.garden/themes/0219829f8a23-HolySmoke/

https://macthemes.garden/themes/8405ec7f05e4-MacPlaza/

https://macthemes.garden/themes/92b39d18db52-MammaMia/

https://macthemes.garden/themes/9a95c2efce50-Scanline/

https://macthemes.garden/themes/64bd1a86e9e6-Onyx/

cyril_st_john

13 minutes ago

One of the great things about Winamp 2 skins in particular is how simple the format is - basically just a bunch of BMPs in a zip file. Pretty much anyone could make one. You didn't need any special software or code knowledge to inspect an existing skin and see how the pieces fit together. You could make one in MSPaint if that's all you had, as I did for my first couple skins.

(There were also a few INI-style config files, mainly to define colors of dynamic things like text. For most skins you would just need to copy the defaults and maybe change a few color hex codes.)

atonse

7 minutes ago

Omarchy seems to be doing a really good job with just that. But like you said, Linux.

DaanDL

12 minutes ago

It was really wild, out of the box you would get: sound themes, color themes, icon themes, startup sounds, wallpaper themes, different loading animations, am I forgetting something? :-D

ktosobcy

26 minutes ago

I like the customization of the OS but I hate when the app developers are feeling creative and can't fit into (my OS of choice) Look&Feel :/

DaanDL

18 minutes ago

The thing is, back then, it worked, because every app looked completely different from each other, and so it was a clusterfuck anyway :-D

altmanaltman

29 minutes ago

I wrote a blog on this focusing on the frutiger aero style and how/why we moved from making the desktop look like a real/character-filled space to the whole "best ui is no ui" and flat design thinking. Fortunately, it seems like style is coming back in... style.

The blog post: https://decodingvibes.com/blog/genz-and-frutiger-aero/

ntoskrnl_exe

2 minutes ago

Beautiful, I'm glad you can still use these with Audacious

marginalia_nu

7 minutes ago

Big thing that allowed this degree of personalization and skinning was that everyone was running fairly homogenous display equipment. When you don't need to deal with a whole spectrum of aspect ratios, input affordances, and DPIs, skinning and customization is something you can do in any image editing software.

DaanDL

5 minutes ago

Correct, and the same goes for webpages, they were built for 15" and/or 17".

VikingCoder

an hour ago

I don't want to use it, but I would laugh if someone made Visual Studio Code look like Winamp...

a34729t

an hour ago

I always though the skin model would be a great UX paradigm for an OS to follow. Pity we have gone the opposite direction and it is turtlenecks and "user delight" all the way down.

jihadjihad

an hour ago

I'll have to spend some time trying to find it if it's on there, but I had one at one point called "Pimeer" where the text was rendered in such a way to look like a Pioneer stereo. Fooled me at the time.

rebyn

an hour ago

Yesterday someone put a Winamp-vibe radio player on a Waveshare ESP32-S3 1.54 LCD. Now if only these skins can be ported to that too. I’m in awe!

hobscure

an hour ago

It took me a while to realize that they are fully working if you click on it.

deadbabe

43 minutes ago

If someone is looking for an insane project, please make Winamp player as a tactile real world physical device, with all the same features. Maybe with a little E-ink display too.