Comment by basch
11 hours ago
It's interesting this article makes no mention of Encarta. Encarta 98, 98, 2000 were the precursors to both Watercolor and Metro.
Encarta quite honestly had a beautiful typography heavy, high contrast interface, one that still shapes my design/ui preferences to this day.
If anyone needs a new wallpaper for the week.. https://archive.org/details/bliss-600dpi png and https://archive.org/details/bliss-600dpi_202006 tiff
Encarta even led the charge on Windows 3.1, where Encarta 94 had the now-classic _ [] X buttons at the top, with custom titlebars, instead of the ^ v classic Windows 3.1 pair.
Are you sure?
https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/e282ac57-e280-93c3-af26-44...
Encarta 95 had it - I remember thinking how cool it was that it looked like Win 95.
Microsoft Money also already had the flat look that became more popular later.
I think it actually started for Encarta in 95, but that was ironically for Mac. It wasn’t quite as polished and consistent. I don’t remember having Encarta 96, but it appears to have had it too.