Motif vs Windows 95 Interface
モチーフ / Windows 95 インターフェース
Gray surfaces with a doubled edge of one light line and one dark line, so only what can be pressed appears to rise.
How to tell them apart. A band with a button running across the bottom of the screen means Windows 95. A thin rectangular ring around the part receiving input means Motif.
Motif
Motif is the interface language of UNIX workstations, maintained by The Open Group, standardized as IEEE 1295 and shipped on more than two hundred platforms. Its own data sheet calls the look a distinctive 3D beveled appearance, meaning every part sits on a gray face edged with one light line and one dark line.
Windows 95 Interface
The screen language Microsoft set down in its 1995 handbook for software design. Gray panels are carved with a doubled outer and inner edge, so the direction of the shadow alone says what can be pressed. A bar sits permanently along the bottom, and every application is assembled from the same system parts.
| Motif | Windows 95 Interface | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1989– | 1995–2001 |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | Microsoft UI |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A gray face lit along its top and left edges and darkened along its bottom and right, so every part appears raised / While a control is held down the two edge colors swap and the part sinks / A thin rectangular ring is drawn around whichever control currently takes keyboard input / Scroll bars are square cornered rectangles with a triangular arrow button at each end | Gray panels framed by a doubled edge, one light line and one dark line, outside and inside / A bar pinned to the bottom of the screen with a single square button at its left end / A flat navy title bar with three small squares grouped at its right end / Small bitmap text with no antialiasing, one letter underlined to mark the keyboard shortcut |
| Best used for | Rebuilding a UNIX workstation era application for an exhibit or a technical write up · Building instrument or CAD controls where pressable and unpressable must read as relief rather than color | Laying out a list or settings screen for business software at a fixed pixel size that never has to scale · Rebuilding the look of a 1990s personal computer for an exhibition or a video |
| Type | A small sans at one fixed size, labels held to a single line, no letterspacing and no ornament inside the text. | Set a bitmap sans at its native size with antialiasing off. Use one size, reserve bold for emphasis, and underline the single shortcut letter. |
| Composition | Windows are cut into beveled rectangles and controls are packed a few pixels apart; there is almost no breathing room, the screen is filled with operable parts. | Split the screen into a permanent bottom bar and a work area. Pack controls about four pixels apart, and put confirm and cancel in a row at the lower right of a dialog. |
| Material | Pick one face color, derive a light edge and a dark edge from it, and paint them on opposite sides; swap the two while pressed, and never round a corner. | Carve everything from four values: the gray face, a white highlight, a mid gray shadow, a black outline. Build relief from an outer and an inner line, and swap light for dark on press. |
| Caution | Replacing the two hard edge colors with a soft drop shadow kills the flip that signals a press, leaving decoration that merely looks raised. | Copy the gray and the doubled line but add rounded corners or soft shadows, and the direction of the carving stops reading, taking the hardness that defined the original with it. |