What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
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What was nice about the UI of Windows 2000
2026-06-16
I liked the UIs of the entire era from 3.0 to 2000, really. I'm mostly<br>using Windows 2000 as an example here because it runs so well in<br>QEMU/KVM and that allows me to easily take screenshots.
Some of the following will sound absolutely trivial, but I think it's<br>worth pointing out.
On the first successful boot of Windows 2000, you get to see this:
(Yes, I have the German version. It doesn't matter much for the sake of<br>this blog post.)
We will talk more about that dialog later, but for now, here's what we<br>have:
A non-distracting clean solid background color.
Some labelled icons on the desktop.
The taskbar with the "Start" button, some quicklaunch icons, some<br>systray icons, and the clock.
Clear, crisp font rendering. (This looked a lot smoother on a CRT<br>monitor but it was still pretty good.)
Since that button down there is called "Start", it implies that you can<br>probably do something with it, maybe start programs? Click and you'll<br>see the Start Menu:
Notice how the Start button now changed its representation: It's<br>"sunken" now, just like pressing a real button. This indicates that it's<br>activated. A button is something that you've most certainly come across<br>in real life before, like the button for turning on the PC, so you are<br>very familiar with that concept.
Notice how the little arrows tell you that some menu items are probably<br>different. Hovering over them opens another menu (you can click, but<br>you don't need to). Hovering over items without such an arrow shows a<br>tooltip, a little help text that tells you what this does.
Notice how the display of the Start menu visually represents its tree<br>structure. It's not like some parts open in place, which would force<br>you to remember where you came from. Instead, the path to the current<br>item is shown clearly.
The icons are colored and quite different from one another. And, yes,<br>there are icons. Icons are a shortcut for your brain: Reading text is<br>harder than grasping the rough shape and color of an icon, so they help<br>you find the item you're looking for.
Open the Windows Explorer:
Okay, I'm not a big fan of this default view. (While we're at it: Hiding<br>filename extensions was one of the capital sins in computer history, if<br>you ask me.) At least you could change it to this:
A tidy table on the right showing directories first, then files. The<br>icons indicate the file type and this is consistent across the OS. The<br>tree on the left allows for quick and easy navigation -- it's mostly<br>clean and not cluttered with "Libraries" or "Places" or other virtual<br>folders that don't really exist. The Explorer of Windows 95 was a little<br>better in this regard, though, see below.
Let's take a look at a random application of the base system, like<br>WordPad:
Notice how (almost) everything that you can interact with is clearly<br>identified: It's either shown as some kind of button or handle, or<br>it uses white background (or blue if it's already selected), which<br>sets it apart from the slightly orange tinted gray of the rest of the<br>window. This isn't immediately clear (why and how would some colors<br>behave differently?), but as soon as you found it out, you'll remember<br>it and this pattern is everywhere.
And notice that these colors are not just some shades away from each<br>other. They are clearly different. At the same time, the whole color<br>scheme is<br>very well balanced:<br>It's not glaringly white, it's not pitch black, the colors aren't too<br>close to each other -- it's just the right amount of contrast.
WordPad is essentially the same as in Windows 95, though. If this was a<br>program made for Windows 2000, it would look a little different.
Let's open some other random thing, like the desktop settings:
Again, the same consistent UI style, the same consistent visual clues.<br>For example, the tabs at the top of this dialog also have that 3D relief<br>effect, so it's safe to assume that you can click on them as well.
In all the screenshots above, notice how scrollbars are always visible<br>if an area is scrollable. For example:
Every scrollbar is always visible -- they don't get hidden to "safe<br>space" (even at a time when 800x600 screens were still pretty normal).<br>And that's how you always knew: "Aha, I can scroll here!"
See that area in the middle? This one:
If there was no scrollbar, you might rightfully assume that this is the<br>entire content of that pane. Nope, it can scroll, and there's no doubt<br>about it -- you can immediately see that without having to hover or click<br>anywhere:
Global program options followed a predictable pattern -- you get a new<br>window with tabs:
Notice how, even inside of one tab, options that belong together are<br>grouped in a "frame" and that's immediately clear to the user:
Compare that to contemporary settings dialogs which look more like this<br>-- you can only tell which options belong together by comparing font<br>sizes:
Let's look at...