Comment by binaryturtle
6 hours ago
I may have missed one by looking at this huge dump, but NONE of the "buttons" I saw there actually looked/felt like a button. Something I can feel that I press it down and it gives proper visual feedback, like a little 3D effect.
I'm old-school. :)
You might like this: https://nielssp.dk/guis/buttons
I have always felt that the button in the last couple version of Windows was a bit off. This page confirms it: Old school buttons used to stay in a "selected" state after being pressed, but that was not implemented in Windows 8's new UI.
Awesome, the Haiku one is my favorite
I really enjoyed Motif and the general flat clean look that came with eg TWM and co. I do have a soft spot for the candy Mac styles, and win2k is still my favorite windows release
Ooh, nice! This very much appeals to the historian and former GUI developer in me.
Update: The Pixel Perfect checkbox makes a noticeable difference in appearance. I presume this is because older systems were developed before the advent of anti-aliasing, and were designed pixel by pixel.
Oh wow, that was so cathartic. Thank you for sharing.
A few really nice buttons there, indeed. :)
Ubuntu 2020 wins, only one dark themed
Dark themes are for people who can't lower their screen brightness.
What, no BeOS?! :)
So interesting to see the contrast between OSX and Windows in 2001.
No wonder OSX felt like the future.
I miss the future.
For me the 2001 OSX looks wishy washy and does not have a professional look.
2 replies →
For me, Windows 3.x era buttons are the pinnacle of buttons.
I unironically prefer the UI of old Bootstrap:
https://getbootstrap.com/1.0.0/
They may have peaked with 2.0:
https://getbootstrap.com/2.0.2/
https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
I see a couple that look like buttons to me, like a yellow Donate button and a green Learn More button.
I agree that most of the other ones don’t look very button like to me either. But even so I would probably understand that most of them were buttons when I saw them in context on a page.
The flat style has been around for a while now, so I’ve gotten used to it even though when I started using computers it was on Windows 95 with the grey rectangular buttons with shaded sides that give them the “3d effect”.
And even flat style buttons often have changes when you hover and click, but it seems that they didn’t copy that part on this button collection page.
They didn't copy any hold/hover states which is too bad, those are an integral part of a button IMO
It sounds like you're talking about the "gloss" era with "juicy" buttons, which some people are retroactively referring to as Frutiger Aero. Yes, things definitely look more 3D in that design. It's currently considered out of mainstream fashion, which explains the lack. Will it resurge?
Earlier era for me actually. I'm a 90s person. :)
Also more generally called skeuomorphism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph
Enter "Lickable Pixels" -- the phrase that described the Aqua era.
Introducing Mac OS X's Aqua interface, Steve Jobs said at Macworld in January 2000: "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)
Apple and Jony Ive killed skeuomorph design a long time ago.
Web 2.0 was fun :-)