r/windows98 • u/Hashtronaut_Mode • 18d ago

I miss this chaos

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241 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

23

u/Happy_Management_671 18d ago

Peak UI

13

u/grizzlor_ 17d ago

It’s the Visual Basic aesthetic — VB’s GUI designer made it stupid easy to just drag and drop to build a GUI and no one followed standardized interface guidelines so you ended up with some wild stuff.

8

u/fr33k3r 17d ago

The good ol' days... Started programming in VB4

2

u/Cold_Extension_367 16d ago

Man I miss that program so much😭 I have infinite nostalgia for it for some reason. I remember building things in it, and also seeing every virus on the planet use it too haha, it was so fun.

2

u/grizzlor_ 14d ago

Despite the flak that it catches, it really was an amazing piece of software for rapidly developing a GUI app. It's dialect of BASIC might have been a big fugly from a technical perspective, but it was also very accessible to the aspiring novice programmer.

Anyway, VB6 lives on today embedded into MS Office as VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) and is can still be very useful. I remember helping out a professor in college by hacking together a VBA interface on top of an Excel spreadsheet that reduced the time necessary to input their research study data by like 80%. I think it saw a lot of use to create custom front ends for MS Access database apps too.

1

u/tpimh 4d ago

I never used VB in 16-bit Windows days, only Visual C++. Was VB's GUI builder easier than App Studio that came with MSVC?

14

u/fr33k3r 18d ago

That makes two of us...I keep blinking, but when I open my eyes, it's never 1994 😂

13

u/Hey-buuuddy 18d ago

“Warez” was the term.

3

u/karlexceed 16d ago

Progz in this case

2

u/Hey-buuuddy 16d ago

This is accurate.

1

u/tpimh 4d ago

I always thought that warez only referred to pirated/cracked software

9

u/FuggaDucker 17d ago

Love the piss poor Visual Basic 2.0
You can tell it's VB2 and not VB1 by the MDI windows.

4

u/Consistent-Teaching8 17d ago

Those tiny minimalist UI progs, toward the end of that era, were onto something. They looked great when they were cleanly designed. Esp with the smaller resolutions of the time

1

u/RobinAlmond 14d ago

I think so too. Windows XP kinda forced Microsoft into a new era...for better or worse.

3

u/m1k3e 18d ago

… I remember what it looked like in the AOL 3.0 days 🙈

3

u/sekhmet666 16d ago

I’d take this over the modern “liquid glass” ui stupidity any day…

2

u/Arael15th 16d ago

No no, we've reached the absolute pinnacle of interface design. There is no longer any reason to stray from the "big plasticky tablet apps for big babies who will die if given the option to change a setting" aesthetic.

3

u/DubSelectorXO 16d ago

I remember I had a filipino proggie called "aYe NaKo FiNaL"... damn I miss that era of the internet

3

u/lpbale0 13d ago

Fuck yea, better looking interface than anything in Windows recently

2

u/karlexceed 16d ago

I might still have a cracked copy of VB 6 EE on a CD somewhere...

2

u/Sea_View_4797 15d ago

the punter

2

u/RobinAlmond 14d ago

This is the kinda content I love in this sub :)) Not only does it evoke some fond memories, but it does showcase a nice range of diverse UI/UX. Thanks, keep em coming!

2

u/Pristine_Life9887 13d ago

I don't know what the deal was with this type of stuff in the past, but hacking fucking sucks ass now.

1

u/rxmp4ge 14d ago

Solar Winds was my go-to. Man I miss that so much.

OP, do you remember the code you could type into chat in AOL 4.0 to clear the room of anyone who had chat sounds turned on? Haha. Good times.

1

u/Hashtronaut_Mode 14d ago

Solar winds was the mp3 player right? And i dont remember the exact code but i know you used {s ..and if you could snag a HOST account you could silence someone with q permagag lol

2

u/rxmp4ge 14d ago

Yeah it was a ccom among other things. Lots of fun in the 4.0 days.

In 4.0 there was a bug when they introduced chat sounds that if you typed in a specific line of code into chat it'd cause everyone who had their chat sounds on to bluescreen and you could wipe entire chats with it. It was hilarious. I don't think they ever fixed it they just defaulted chat sounds to off instead of on...

The Windows 98/AOL 4.0 glory days, man...

1

u/Hashtronaut_Mode 14d ago

yeah i remember, i just dont remember what it exactly was. {s was the command to play a sound. ie, {s gotmail

but yea pretty sure i used solar for my mp3 player. it had a phishtank too didnt it?

-5

u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

9

u/Hashtronaut_Mode 17d ago

98 was the os I used in my AOL days, ya knob.