Awesome job!
Of course, it's only for my own invoicing/crm system. I started on replacing the look and feel of everything with a flat more modern/less user-friendly equivalent by downloading the static css and modifying it to look like material UI designs.
Is there a name for this style? Im also trying to pinpoint the defining characteristics. The thing that stand out to me are:
- 3d-ish buttons
- gradients (headers, buttons, etc)
- not much whitespace between text
- small text
I've hand written the CSS for all of the sites I've worked on, and the CSS is smaller than some all encompassing library. Plus, I'm much better at CSS. But I decided I wanted to invest that effort. No shame if you don't
https://github.com/dbohdan/classless-css
also, https://github.com/troxler/awesome-css-frameworks
others may give you a _real_ recommendation. cheers
[0]: http://classless.de
It uses classes to style html inline and looks pretty good. The downside is it gives a fairly generic look but I don't think you should be too worried about that.
Tailwind has largely replaced it because it offers more flexibility. You use utility classes to write the css (add padding, change color, etc.) and isnt as opinionated as bootstrap. But I dont think you want that.
If you really are going for lightweight and simple you should checkout classless css which only uses html to style things. Nothing needed from you other than including the css sheet. https://github.com/dbohdan/classless-css
https://alexbsoft.github.io/win95.css/ windows 95
https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/ windows xp
https://cs16.samke.me/ counter strike 1.6
https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/ edward tufte
https://jdan.github.io/98.css/ windows 98
https://khang-nd.github.io/7.css/ windows 7
https://micah5.github.io/PSone.css/ playstation one
https://nostalgic-css.github.io/NES.css/ nes
https://sakofchit.github.io/system.css/ apple system
https://thesimscss.inbn.dev/ the sims
https://github.com/anthmn/hackertosh.css
https://github.com/1j01/os-gui
https://github.com/themesberg/windows-95-ui-kit
https://github.com/andersevenrud/retro-css-shell-demo
https://github.com/arturbien/React95
https://github.com/Gioni06/terminal.css
https://github.com/jianzhongli/csswin10
https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386
https://github.com/lachsfilet/Renkbench
https://github.com/lolstring/window98-html-css-js
https://github.com/npjg/classic.css
https://github.com/robbiebyrd/platinum
https://github.com/bryanbraun/after-dark-css
https://github.com/npjg/new-dawn
https://github.com/ritenv/retro-desktop
https://github.com/RoelN/c64css3
Not to be confused with design systems or UI libraries. Just CSS stylesheets
Meanwhile many games have hyper stylized menus with flowery wingdings all over them and makes it unrealistic / a horrible experience / chore.
I will use it in my next presentation for shareholders. /s
Fun fact: in CS 1.6 it could actually be reverted to the old-style WON UI by with `setinfo "_vgui_menus" "0"` in config.cfg or in the console, or buried in the menus as "Options > Multiplayer > Advanced > Buy menu type > VGUI Menus".
This is indeed the Steam UI, not Counter-Strike. This was also back when they had games like Go built in that you could play with people on your friends list.
Though I am not a gamer I have seen my son playing different games, I loved it not because it belonged to a certain game but because it is clean and different.
Are there any other unique CSS libs that could be used on pages?
why did you skin the cat that way when there's 98 other ways to do it?
maybe there's a logical reason more than "that's just what came to mind", maybe not. that's the beauty of the whole thing. there is no one way
Obviously this is nitpicking and this UI was made for fun rather than being a serious library intended for production. But that's a different criticism of the GP than the one you made.
If you know a better way to get that info than asking the question, I'm all ears.
(major digression ahead)
This is actually something I've been digging into for a while, trying to improve my own communication. My own current best answer for this sort of situation is the social expectation is that a neutral question will always be accompanied by praise and gratitude, and any question asked that lacks that accompaniment will be interpreted as antagonistic.
For example, the comment you're responding too could have started with "This looks really cool, ..." or "Wow, this takes me back..." or "I can see a lot of effort went into this..." and it would have resulted in the question coming off as neutral instead of critical to some people.
What's fascinating is when I mention this kind of thing I almost always get one of two responses
* Of course that's how it works, everyone knows that!
* That's ridiculous, no one can be expected to do that!
I tried installing CS 1.6 20 years after launch roughly and it was pointless trying to compete.
I logged in about 120 hours in 2024 after not playing for 12 years, and everything was different and the same. You got a lot of 30-something's playing after office hours, keeping the servers alive, and like I said, some servers are at a completely different level, I had so much laughs and met quite a few new people...
I recommend to look a bit more and I'm sure you'll find a few servers to stick around to, even if you get headshotted by an AWP from across the map on each round.
The documentation was almost non-existent though.
What mod(s) did you work on?
I personally had to rewrite most of mod's VGUI code to make it less leaky and more usable, and not once have I thought of using CSS instead of those INI-style theme configs. But CSS is too complicated to parse (and no one will use that anyway). :(
Also ought to be paired with https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
I came up with a terrible pun shortly after seeing this: "Kern you feel the love tonight"
It could use some styles for tables.
When current UI trends are designed to be flat and hide functionality, destroying discoverability, a key component of UX, I'd argue that "dated" is a feature, not a bug.
I got the latest CoD for PS5 like a year ago and I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was going on in the menu. Incoherent mess impossible to navigate. I felt like I was going insane.
I guess I’m just getting old.
Similar horizontal scrolling list of tiles shoehorned into an interface where I'm NOT okay with just going with the flow and picking whatever is offered because I exactly know what I'm looking for. Bonus points for the little tabs
It is definitely not designed with PC in mind, but even on Xbox it feels horrible to navigate. Takes too long to get into an actual game and there is a constant “upsell” happening for premium things.
I miss the days of CoD1/2/4.
It can work depending on the style/tone of the game.
The real problem, in my opinion, is all the games nowadays with perfectly flat, generic, colorless UIs with absolutely no style or identity. Nintendo has been doing this a lot, for example.
I'm done with flat and muted all the time.
Also (more to my example) it looks like a realistic UI. A lot of game stylized UI are UI nobody would ever make intentionally for a thing you're supposed to use often.
So yeah like you say just some depth and realistic UI feel goes a long way.
Really made you feel like you were inside the cryosuit.
1: https://gamebanana.com/mods/82979 I still contend it is one of the most atmospheric custom maps ever made - how else do you get to role play as Gary Oldman or Harrison Ford!
That's probably this one: https://archive.org/details/cs-1_6_z-bot
Then, starting about 10 years ago, they started throwing all that research out the window in favor of minimal, clean, flat, "sleek" UIs because the screenshots are easier to market.
They started appealing to the lowest common denominator. We've lost choice and customizability in favor of allowing Apple and Microsoft to decide what our desktops should look like because some people might be confused if they open up an options panel.
I hate nearly every single thing about the MacOS UX. The dock is awful, and so many insane defaults all over the place. Hiding scrollbars is a bug, not a feature. Pointer acceleration is a bug, not a feature. The scroll wheel operating in reverse is a bug, not a feature.
At least with Windows, I can make it tolerable with third party software to make my task bar and Start menu look and feel like the Win2K days. My biggest complaint about the modern UX is coalescing multiple windows from one program into a single item and not having text. If I have 3 Firefox windows open, that should be 3 items on my task bar. It makes it so I can switch to any of them in a single click. It also means that I can use a window as a widget to monitor something by having the status as the title of the window.
I disagree with every single thing you've said here. And I'd be willing to bet most Apple users do too.
That being said, I do think there's some charm in simple, "outdated" UIs.
Yeah, me too. And I kinda hate how Gnome followed that path and made the same mistakes what Apple did. I am in trouble every time I need to use the UI. It is just very unintuitive and I get quite annoyed with it if I need to use it for longer periods. The small scrollbars, the dock, how useless Finder feels like after Dolphin...
https://web-serial-app.netlify.app/
(Source: https://github.com/tanepiper/web-serial-controller)
But, to be fair, I still use win7 in native (unthemed) UI mode and haven't played many modern games to have a proper comparison :D
MacOS is a bad bet if you like to adjust your computing environment to make it more pleasant, like disabling animations, or having different motions for scrolling with mouse and trackpad.
It does, but at the same time it doesn’t. If you spend as much time practicing rushing/+w as you do playing methodically/intelligently/holding angles, it works really well. Especially considering most people don’t expect it and don’t have a good counter to it since most people don’t play like that. This is true at all levels of play (except maybe tier 1/2/3 professionals teams). Check out the streamer/youtuber renyan for an example (on de_vertigo in particular). His play style worked well enough to get him to 4400 elo on faceit in csgo, so it can’t be that bad.
Now's a great time to start playing — The TF2C 2.2 “Double Down Update” comes out today!! https://tf2classic.com/double_down/
e: And I also had to disable macOS's default keyboard layout switching shortcuts (which I never use anyway) since I kept triggering it while crouch-jumping lol
Still a bit of a gray area because there's not set "geocities" or "myspace" style, but I'll include stuff like this for now
I believe they switched to Chromium while preparing for the OS X port. You'd think this would be good for security, but they then proceeded to update to the latest version approximately once a decade.
Also, to be fair: it was VGUI2, which, AFAIK, was introduced with Steam UI and still used in HL2. And was never made available to modders of GS.
Fortnite UI changes constantly and is horrible to use.
Factorio has a great UI.
Aside from the atrocious menu structure, they also throw all this lingo at you with zero explanation like you’re already supposed to know how everything works. Challenges? Plunder? DMZ? Season pass? I don’t even know what a “season” is! Let me play the damn game!