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I'm pretty sure that's how most, if not all, instant messaging services worked 20 years ago... Was a feature, not a bug. The whole idea of sending an instant message. If you wanted to send a non-instant message, you'd send an email instead.


That' not true. Icq and other messengers (don't remember the names anymore) had async messaging functionality and that was expected.


ICQ worked more like SMS. You could send a message to someone who's offline. It would get stored on the server and delivered when they come online.


I made something similar as well (that includes both 3.11, 95, 2000, XP, CDE and Mac OS 9, and also all the default color schemes of those): https://nielssp.github.io/classic-stylesheets/?theme=win9x&s...

My focus was not so much on pixel perfect, but instead on creating something that would also work and look aesthetically pleasing on modern systems, like with higher DPI monitors and such. So one of the the things I did was to recreate all the icons and symbols in SVG.

I tried posting it as a Show HN when I added XP and Mac OS 9, but it didn't get much attention. Maybe the title of the project isn't as catchy.


Love it; though the Windows 2000 theme seems a bit off (headings to heavy/bold).

Windows 2000 was the pinnacle of UI design IMO.


Whoa. Insanely cool. Outstanding quality and theming, such a simple implementation. Only thing I'd want to see is theming for data tables, maybe even an interactive table that behaves like the lists and grids.



This is amazing, thanks for this! I made a simple app using 98.css because that was the most feature-filled retro CSS library I could find. Going to try and use your 3.1 schemes :)


This project is absolutely gorgeous, you really did a great job at mapping each UI elements, really great work!


To echo the other comments: this is beautiful work!


Absolutely incredible work


Very cool, thank you!


This is incredible


Holy crap, that Mac OS 9 one is fantastic!!!


I’ve always had a soft spot for the older Mac OS design, and I really love this implementation! I spent sooooo much time in windows and Linux doing various things to try and get that feel back


Ran into this exact issue on a project. The developer that implemented the solution wanted to make sure that we handled those 6 digit PINs in the most secure way with salt and pepper and bcrypt, and at the end of the day the system only actually checked the first two digits of the PIN because bcrypt ignored the rest.


No, at least that's what I'm going for as well, at least for monospace fonts in editors and such. I can't stand the slightly blurry look of antialiased fonts and absolutely prefer the crisp edges of traditional bitmap fonts.


Tiny nitpick – buttons don't look like that when pressed in Windows 98 (or any version of Windows for that matter).

This is what they're supposed to look like: https://imgur.com/a/iFMJCER (98.css on top, Windows 98 below)

As far as I'm aware, the only buttons that look like that when pressed are the Start menu button and taskbar buttons.

Similarly, buttons are supposed to have a black border in addition to the dotted outline when they're focused.


Good catch - You can probably tell which parts I took from Microsoft Windows User Experience [0] and which I built while eyeing my VM.

Unsure why there's a discrepancy. You're probably right re: taskbar buttons.

https://i.imgur.com/dxOYj2Y.png https://i.imgur.com/X3DJ50T.png

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Experience-Professi...


Probably a design bug in win98! I love that you used the book as reference. Incredible stuff.


I think the thick black border marks the "default dialog button", not focus.


It does both. Black border alone marks the default button in the dialog (unless another button is focused), black border + dotted outline marks focus.

I double checked in a VM running Windows 98 earlier today. I suspect some of these 9x recreations are based solely on screenshots, in which details like active and focus states are not obvious.


To put it another way:

* Thick black border indicates which button would be pressed if you hit enter. This is the focused button, or the default button if no button currently has focus.

* Dashed border indicates which button or other control currently has focus; this button is pressed if you hit space (but if another control has focus then space does not press the default button).


Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I made this based on the look of CDE: https://nielssp.github.io/classic-stylesheets/?theme=cde&ski... It also includes all the default color schemes.


Yes thank you!!


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