With it, you don't need to use React to get decent results, see?
- [98.css](https://github.com/jdan/98.css): A Windows 98 inspired framework for building faithful recreations of old UIs.
- [Office 97 clipart in svg format](https://archive.org/details/mso97clipart)
- [XP.css](https://github.com/botoxparty/XP.css): A Windows XP inspired framework for building faithful recreations of operating system GUIs. An extension of 98.css.
- [7.css](https://khang-nd.github.io/7.css/)
- [System.css](https://sakofchit.github.io/system.css/) Retro Apple-inspired UI
- [Puppertino](https://github.com/codedgar/Puppertino) meant to mimic the look of macOS. [demo](https://codedgar.github.io/Puppertino/)
- [Commodore 64 CSS](http://pixelambacht.nl/2013/css3-c64/)
- DOS: [BOOTSTRA.386](https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386): A vintage 1980s DOS inspired Twitter Bootstrap theme
- [a2k](https://a2000-docs.netlify.app/): A Windows 2000 inspired web component library
Also they weren't using off-black greys back then. EGA-16, web-216 or bust. Greys exist, but not those. https://www1.udel.edu/cookbook/web/webcolor/webcolors.html
...God DAMN dude, don't bury the lede! You made this? http://kristopolous.github.io/BOOTSTRA.386/demo.html This is gorgeous!
I don’t think you need React but this page isn’t demonstrating that you don’t need it.
Subpixel antialiasing (I think) turns the text on that site green.
I'm 39, born in 1983, so I have serious nostalgia around Windows 95. I was 12 when it came out, my parents bought a Dell when it was new and those years were very formative for me. I assumed that nostalgia would be the only driver to do this... But you weren't born until ~8 years after it was released. I'm genuinely curious (and impressed!)
Looking back, Win95-2000 was indeed an excellent UI. Looks as though ReactOS has recently moved away from having that look as its default, though: https://reactos.org/gallery/
Also some nostalgia from that time! My dad was an early adopter of technology (as part of his work - he was head of R&D for a large corporation), so he'd bring home all sorts of cool computers that would be handed down to me. First laptop I ever remember using (when I was 5 or so?) was a ThinkPad (before Lenovo ruined the brand) running Windows XP. I was raised fending for myself in SMF / phpBB forums & IRC chatrooms, so I still hold an appreciation for the times pre-iPhone :P
I love pixel art, and Windows 95 looks so cute!
Anyway, I think it’s probably something like how the brutalist architecture was all built before I was born, but it’s still something I can appreciate now.
Awesome work! The whole aesthetic is well done.
Just for future reference, Show HNs are for things you've made yourself, so while your website could be a Show HN, this would be a regular submission. More details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
Where do I find COMMAND.COM?
The uncanny valley comes to mind. It resembles Windows 95, but the fonts and spacing feel wrong.
In contrast, HTML5 has an absolute poverty of UI controls. The web community ended up settling on React + "design systems" to try and patch their way out of this, but because theming and widget toolkits get blended together in this approach the widgets are constantly being reinvented and end up half baked compared to desktop UI frameworks, which separate theming from widget behavior and thus get way more investment in the core feature set.
This shows up in a lot of subtle ways, and a few not so subtle ways. For example there are some controls common in Win95 apps that are conspicuously missing here:
• Virtualized list view with resizable/movable headers. There doesn't seem to be a list view control at all, in fact. The control they call list is actually a menu!
• Yet there's no menu bar, and the menu ("list") doesn't seem to be a real context menu. Right click an item in the tree view and you get the browser context menu, which is useless.
• There's no tree table view.
• The range control doesn't have notches or the ability to see the value you're sliding.
etc. And of course you can forget about all the little features Win95 widgets had like proper keyboard support (try using the up/down arrows in the tree view, it doesn't work).
Now obviously this is just a fun hobby project. It's not meant to be an actual widget toolkit competitive with Windows 95, so the criticism above isn't "real" criticism, it's just a springboard for a bit of technical observation: it's 2023! Why does the web still not have a UI framework competitive with an OS that came out nearly 30 years ago? If you wanted to make a Win95 theme for Qt or JavaFX then it would be quite easy and you would actually be able make apps that were competitive with Win95 apps in terms of UI features. But the React+DOM approach can't manage that because the effort required to flesh out the widgets is split between a thousand design systems. That seems wrong and is part of why web UI feels kinda dumbed down compared to what we once had.
