Microsoft.com homepage -- fascinating website design

[Darren Dirt]

via a "Flashback" @ http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/features_flshbk.htm <-- which itself was published more than 13 years ago! (24Dec1999 according to this archives)




"April 1994 thru August 1995" -- yes folks apparently THAT POO STAIN STAYED UP FOR WELL OVER A YEAR!

...then, for the last few months of 1995 -- this:

[Mr. Analog]

Man these were a trip down memory lane, I just shared this link with the teams I'm meeting with today

[Darren Dirt]

Man these were a trip down memory lane, I just shared this link with the teams I'm meeting with today

If you're like me then, you'll also thoroughly enjoy the retro comments-conversations @ The Old New Thing -- some are ridic deeply technical, but a lot are about user expreriences and UI and design considerations etc.

(TONT = where I actually FOUND the OP -- see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2014/02/04/10496518.aspx "The Internet looked like this and a few years later, this..." )


examples:
In 2005 a discussion about laptop and TABLET pcs and how developers need to "pay their taxes" when it comes to considering power consumption (and other often-overlooked aspects of an application) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/08/22/454487.aspx

In 2004 a discussion about how people [un]intentionally lie on product surveys, which eventually switches into a discussion of CUA and other user experience "standards" http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/10/12/241228.aspx


Often a very recent blog will hyperlink to an ancient discussion on the subject (which is how I found those 2 above), and also often his blog entry will be a response to "Reader Some Name wanted to know why [semi-technical thing] is [the way it functions instead of some other way, or the name it is named when it's not really an accurate name]".

Maybe I'm weird but I find that kind of cpu-dev history stuff far more fascinating than a dev blog filled with "well, I tried the new framework today, and here's the bug/quirk/hard-learned-lesson that I want to share with you, let's all laugh and not really grow at all as a result..."



And surprising how often the 2004/2005/etc. discussions are readable today, I gotta say I find it fascinating that almost a decade later so many of those issues are still issues today (just sometimes the depth of complexity has increased for the average developer, or the depth of frustration has grown exponentially for the users).


The blogger (Raymond Chen) took most of The Good Stuff and put it into a book (a few years ago) -- http://www.amazon.com/Old-New-Thing-Development-Throughout-ebook/dp/B004YWCL5W -- and apparently it's both inspiring and self-correcting for developers who want to do better than the minimum, but also a unique insight into more than a decade of development of the Windows OS and related MS software and technologies. Like history + selfhelp + accidental comedy, maybe.

At one point Chen sorta sums up his blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/07/20/10040074.aspx
"Topics I'm inclined to cover:
-Windows history (particularly the Windows 95 era).
-Windows user interface programming in Win32, and shell programming in particular.
-General programming topics (selectively).
-Issues of general interest.
-My personal hobbies.
"
Somehow those first two are consistently A Really Good Read.

But it's a handy timesink I keep re-finding; covering everything from simple reminders about Windows shortcut combos you gotta tell all your friends about to "Hey check this out: Museum Of Bad Art".