Windows 95 Interface

Windows 95 インターフェース / 1995–2001 / Style / Microsoft UI

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.

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

Windows 95 Interface — Windows 95 ポーランド語版のデスクトップとスタートメニュー — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Windows 95 ポーランド語版のデスクトップとスタートメニュー — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Windows 95 Interface — Windows 95 ビルド4.00.116 の右クリックメニュー 1994 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Windows 95 ポーランド語版のデスクトップとスタートメニュー — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.
Further study: Microsoft Press が1995年に出したガイドライン本の図版と目次 / Windows の描画APIにある外縁と内縁の組み合わせの指定 / 当時の業務ソフトの画面写真に残る部品の寸法と隙間

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