Discussion Which Windows Theme? (1995 'till Today)

[jnjnilson6]

If you could choose any Windows theme from Windows 95 onward, which system UI would capture most your aesthetic sense and personal preference?

Would be glad to hear about it!

Thank you!

 

[punkncat]

I assume you are talking about the out of box setting. I very rarely leave that and enjoy the selections available on the store. With that said, I think if I had to leave a stock one up, W10 would be my choice.

 

[USAFRet]

You left off pre-Win95, Win 98, Win98Se, WinMe, Win 8.1.

 

[jnjnilson6]

You left off pre-Win95, Win 98, Win98Se, WinMe, Win 8.1.

You're right, of course! But it seems impossible to add more than 10 options in the queue and for this I decided to outline only the versions which carried along major visual changes.

Somehow I think that Microsoft is more and more going toward the Win3.11 look with the new versions than toward anything else.

 

[USAFRet]

You're right, of course! But it seems impossible to add more than 10 options in the queue and for this I decided to outline only the versions which carried along major visual changes.

Somehow I think that Microsoft is more and more going toward the Win3.11 look with the new versions than toward anything else.

There was a major change from 8 to 8.1

 

[jnjnilson6]

There was a major change from 8 to 8.1

That's a good point of view, but then-again Windows 8 and 8.1 prove something like Windows 98 and 98 SE or Win XP SP1 and Win XP SP2 and 3.
Win8.1 was much better (than Win8) and, perhaps, it harbored some visual changes, yet when you say Windows 8, most people automatically think of both Windows 8 and 8.1, so it's swiftly and universally recognized that way.

But again, thinking intelligently and marking the answer crisply and electrically (diluting the moody sereness of the representation connoting only a single number), the way you said it, carries along indefatigable wisdom and is surely an appropriate point of view toward the consummation of the details.

Thanks for writing up!

 

[USAFRet]

Win 8 introduced the Metro/tablet thing.
8.1 walked that back a LOT, to a more desktop look.

(even though in Win 8 you could undo most of that tablet look yourself. I did)

 

[jnjnilson6]

Win 8 introduced the Metro/tablet thing.
8.1 walked that back a LOT, to a more desktop look.

(even though in Win 8 you could undo most of that tablet look yourself. I did)

That's true! Well, have you any preferred theme from among those of the aforementioned systems or have you not decided on the matter?
Personally, I'm leaning toward Windows 7.

 

[USAFRet]

That's true! Well, have you any preferred theme from among those of the aforementioned systems or have you not decided on the matter?
Personally, I'm leaning toward Windows 7.

I am OS agnostic.

I use applications, not the OS.
The specifics of square/rounded corners, or Areo, or where certain clicky buttons are means little to me.

As long as it functions and does not get in my way...it matters not what it "looks like".

 

[jnjnilson6]

I am OS agnostic.

I use applications, not the OS.
The specifics of square/rounded corners, or Areo, or where certain clicky buttons are means little to me.

As long as it functions and does not get in my way...it matters not what it "looks like".

You're right. Unless the Interface is terribly ugly, bothering the eyes in gyrations of brightened color and unsymmetrical outline, curving toward a distinguished and massive disorientation of placement and purpose, anything that's good enough is good.

 

[dwd999]

There was a variation that they called the Windows XP Media Center edition that I liked because things were more blue and rounded IIRC.

 

[lordmogul]

Let's not forget that Me/2000 had some differences to 95/98, they might be minor differences like thumbnails or a 2 color gradient on the window title bar, but there were differences. Certainly on a similar amount as the difference between Vista and 7 or 8.1 and 10

From a pure aesthetic sense I would say the Vista/7 design. Aero had visual flair, but could also be made quite well performing. A second place would go to XP, not because of the default Luna design, but because of the amount of customization that could be done with it.

But from a performance and snappiness point I would go with XP. I notice that every time I boot up my XP retro machine, the explorer just feels much tighter. A bit like the difference between a 60 Hz and a 144 Hz monitor, much less felt latency.

From a pure feature set point I would say that the more recent versions have, well, more features, but lots of things take more steps than they used to. Almost as if visual "style" is more important than functionality. Add to that that everything has extra wide bezels.
I'm a friend of a functional design, and have always weaked things like window borders or text to be tighter. (Like changing from Segoe UI to Tahoma, a font I find much easier to read at 8-9 pt size)

Guess I stay with favoring the 7 explorer then.

 

[Endre]

If you could choose any Windows theme from Windows 95 onward, which system UI would capture most your aesthetic sense and personal preference?

Would be glad to hear about it!

Thank you!

Windows 11 (Dark Theme).

 

[LORDPrometheus]

Honestly Windows 10 grew on me but if I want nostalgia then XP SP3 all the way!

 

[Endre]

Honestly Windows 10 grew on me but if I want nostalgia then XP SP3 all the way!

Back in the day, I used to have Windows XP SP3 from AMIT (It had a desktop background with a cool car).
It had a few cool themes.

 

[palladin9479]

I always thought the Windows 7 Aero Glass look was the best with it's translucent themes. Couldn't stand the tiled Tablet OS metro look, made managing all my software annoying as heck. Thankfully Open Shell exists and can make make later versions of Windows have that same look and organization.

 

[little_me]

I can handle anything between 95 and 8.1 (8 was still configurable to big degree) fine. past that, meh.
why?
windows were made lot harder to resize by dragging sides (all sides were made smaller) and places to move window by dragging it were made smaller also.

Things work, it's fine but if I don't want to auto-size windows and/or tile them.... windows 10 kind of axed that functionality.

in general, I think windows 2000 (not ME, ME was horror on humankind) was where it all was good at on UI side.

 

[DavidM012]

I don't have a preference I simply use the current OS de jour as it is necessary - it hardly matters if you like it or loathe it and the alternative is to learn linux and maybe windows emulation for steam games which I haven't done because there isn't too much point in paying twice for more storage and data drives and when a dual boot system unravels it's a pita to fix

What I don't like about windows 10 file explorer is things move when you hover the mouse over folders and drive letters when you want to drag and drop things it expands the directory tree which is annoying and I don't really remember windows 9x or 2000 or even windows 7 just that things moved around between OS's and also I'm not overly fond of windows 10 settings menu as I did always prefer control panel it makes more sense to me because you just click directly on what you want and go there rather than having to find and even look up on the internet where to find things sometimes.

So well either run windows, learn linux or buy an imac. Preference is nothing to do with it. In ye olde days windows 95c barely ran usb 2.0 so you needed windows 98, and then halo was windows vista only or something and now halo 5 is xbox only so maybe the question should be, what operating system do you put up with, which for me is windows 10 at the moment anyway since my mobo & cpu combo doesn't support tpm 2.0 I can't upgrade to windows 11 but don't really need it for the improved cpu scheduler anyway.

Compatibility is a recurring theme.

 

[monttukani]

Windows 2000 was the thing fo me. Loved the loading screen, the log-in prompt and the start-up info it gave after that. The 9x UI was clean and professional. It felt like it was made for the people that know how to handle computers.