I’ve run into gen-z people talking very nostalgically about 2000s UI design trends. They’ve even retroactively dubbed the era as ‘futiger aero’.
I’m a bit older and don’t as fondly remember that era; I remember a lot of excesses like nonsensical reflections and calendar apps with leather textures. The 2013 turn to “flat” design felt quite fresh to me, and I haven’t really gotten tired of it yet.
I got tired of it in 2013. While it does work in some places (Android does it reasonably well), I haven’t yet seen a good flat design on the desktop.
Windows 8 and 10 looked garish and hard to read, especially since everything is a rectangle with a one-pixel outline. Is it a button? Is it a text field? Maybe a thick progress bar? Who knows, they all look extremely similar.
While Apple did overdo it in the later big-cat OS X releases, I’ll take a felt-textured widget panel and a calendar bound in leather over an endless sea of hairline rectangles.
It would be fine if it had more ways to differentiate elements from each other - darkening around the edges of windows, buttons that actually look raised so they aren’t identical to a text box, scroll bars that aren’t SO FUCKING TINY that it’s clear MS is embarrassed that they exist in the first place, etc. etc.
There was the unreleased Windows “Blackcomb”, basically prior to Redmond seeing Apple’s Aqua, which was like a bit Windows 2000, a bit ME, flatness, outlines, square corners, and it could’ve been metro.
But resolutions and anti-aliasing were getting (slightly) better, so copy Apple, XP instead gets texture and rounds everything.
Vista was another interesting take, especially weird was the window controls. We are still living with those weird long controls with a margin below, but not above them, a lot of the time, even in flat land Windows 11.
I’ve run into gen-z people talking very nostalgically about 2000s UI design trends. They’ve even retroactively dubbed the era as ‘futiger aero’.
I’m a bit older and don’t as fondly remember that era; I remember a lot of excesses like nonsensical reflections and calendar apps with leather textures. The 2013 turn to “flat” design felt quite fresh to me, and I haven’t really gotten tired of it yet.
I got tired of it in 2013. While it does work in some places (Android does it reasonably well), I haven’t yet seen a good flat design on the desktop.
Windows 8 and 10 looked garish and hard to read, especially since everything is a rectangle with a one-pixel outline. Is it a button? Is it a text field? Maybe a thick progress bar? Who knows, they all look extremely similar.
While Apple did overdo it in the later big-cat OS X releases, I’ll take a felt-textured widget panel and a calendar bound in leather over an endless sea of hairline rectangles.
Hell yeah I love that shit. Gimme unnecessarily textured UIs, frosted glass effects and all the skeuomorphisms you can manage.
I am definitely older (my first programming job involved a mac plus) and personally, I can’t stand the flat look era.
It would be fine if it had more ways to differentiate elements from each other - darkening around the edges of windows, buttons that actually look raised so they aren’t identical to a text box, scroll bars that aren’t SO FUCKING TINY that it’s clear MS is embarrassed that they exist in the first place, etc. etc.
There was the unreleased Windows “Blackcomb”, basically prior to Redmond seeing Apple’s Aqua, which was like a bit Windows 2000, a bit ME, flatness, outlines, square corners, and it could’ve been metro.
But resolutions and anti-aliasing were getting (slightly) better, so copy Apple, XP instead gets texture and rounds everything.
Vista was another interesting take, especially weird was the window controls. We are still living with those weird long controls with a margin below, but not above them, a lot of the time, even in flat land Windows 11.
If they are really nostalgic for that, tell them to use react os.