# Windows 95 Interface (Windows 95 インターフェース)

> 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.

- IndexStyle No.513 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/windows-95-interface
- Kind: Style · Family: Microsoft UI · Era: 1995–2001
- Mood: Trust, Technology, Nostalgia
- Color cues: #C0C0C0 / #000080 / #008080 (cues taken from reference works, not a fixed palette)

## Defining characteristics

- 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

- 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

## Composition recipe

- Typography & lettering: Set a bitmap sans at its native size with antialiasing off. Use one size, reserve bold for emphasis, and underline the single shortcut letter.
- Layout & structure: 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 & texture: 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.

## What to avoid

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.

## Application checklist

Before calling a piece an application of this style, check it against the defining characteristics:

- [ ] 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
- [ ] At least one reference work below has been studied directly
- [ ] The caution above ("What to avoid") has been addressed

## Related styles

- **Luna (ルナ)** — Windows XP's look: blue taskbar, green Start button, rounded windows and a meadow wallpaper repainting the gray office machine as household optimism. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/luna
- **Terminal UI (ターミナルUI)** — The terminal look: monospaced phosphor characters on black. The VT100's green afterglow became the primal image of the computer's face, repeated from hacker cinema to modern CLI tools. → https://indexstyle.org/styles/terminal-ui

## 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

## Reference works

- 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 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windows95pl.png
- Windows 95 ビルド4.00.116 の右クリックメニュー 1994 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windows95-4.0.116-RightClick.png
- Windows 95 ビルド4.00.180 の「Close Program」ダイアログ 1994 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Windows95-4.0.180-TaskManager.png

## Source of record

- Internet Archive — Microsoft Press, "The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design"（1995） — https://archive.org/details/windowsinterface00micr

## Machine surfaces

- JSON: https://indexstyle.org/api/styles/windows-95-interface
- Image-generation prompt (legally clean): https://indexstyle.org/styles/windows-95-interface/prompt.txt
- MCP: https://indexstyle.org/mcp (tools: search_styles, get_style, compose_styles; prompts: image-prompt, apply-style)