Grzyb wrote:

One way or another

derSammler wrote:

emulation aside

Well, I meant exactly emulation/virtualization.

Modern computers stopped being "IBM compatible" years ago.

Last time I checked, mainstream PCs still came with IBM-compatible BIOS, and I was able to run on them PC DOS 1.00 from 1981.
Yes, I know it's not going to last for long, but as of 2019, the IBM PC standard is still alive.

On the other hand, try to get a current Macintosh, and boot System 1 (1984), or even Mac OS X 10.3 (2003-2005)...

As of 2018, current x86 CPUs (including x86-64 CPUs) are able to boot real mode operating systems and can run software written for almost any previous x86 chip without emulation or virtualization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_mode

Gered wrote:

Here you go! I dunno what formats iPhones allow as ringtones / notification sounds, but I'm sure you could convert this if necessary.

Thank you so much! Yes, I can get around it and convert as a ringtone for my iPhone. I'll set it for iMessage and WhatsApp

Our first real family computer (i.e. the one that got us on the internet) had a Reveal SC500 sound card, and the drivers disk came with some audio applications written by a company called Voyetra. The two I used the most were WinDAT (WAV player/recorder/editor) and MIDI Orchestrator (MIDI recorder/editor, but I only ever used it for playback...I just liked all the sliders and buttons and whatnot 🤣). They were purely 16-bit Win3x programs, and although they ran fine on Win9x, once I finally upgraded to Win2K & XP around 2002, they became buggy and less usable. The eventual upgrade to 64-bit Windows killed my ability to use them outright.

Yeah, there are much more capable free programs available today. But, I still miss WinDAT and MIDI Orchestrator.

- Winamp - it really whips the Llama's ass!
Yes I know it still somewhat exists, but nothing seems to happen on the current website anymore.

- Old Firefox. They really ran themselves into the ground over the last few years and basically made Chrome the new market leader. What the hell were they thinking when they integraded some random videochat application, Persona themes, bundled a "Mr. Robot" advertising addon with their browser and removed a lot of customization options and made a lot of addons incompatible when they ditched XUL?

They deserve to be forgotten for all of these actions, but I also don't like having Chrome as "the one browser" nowadays. We're back to square one, it's just like IE6 all over again.

- Pidgin / Miranda. It was nice to have an application that bundled all messenger applications, without any advertising or bloat. Back in the day I had lot of friends in ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber and more. I was able to chat with all of them using one application. Nowadays we went back to the dark ages with WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and many more that cannot be easily combined.

- Webdesign in general. I don't want to get back to 640x480 and fifty iFrames for navigation, god no. But as a webdesigner, I hate building modern websites sometimes. Big sliders you have to scroll through, unneccessary whitespace, ginourmous fonts...modern websites look very pleasing to the eyes, but navigation-wise they can be a major pain. Mobile-first development has made menu structures worse in a lot of ways. Some designers put in mobile menus on the desktop version. Just stop it already! And I goddamn hate GDPR cookie banners! Politicians that are too old to grasp basic technical things should stay away from breaking the internet.

schmatzler wrote:

- Old Firefox. They really ran themselves into the ground over the last few years and basically made Chrome the new market leader. What the hell were they thinking when they integraded some random videochat application, Persona themes, bundled a "Mr. Robot" advertising addon with their browser and removed a lot of customization options and made a lot of addons incompatible when they ditched XUL?

They deserve to be forgotten for all of these actions, but I also don't like having Chrome as "the one browser" nowadays. We're back to square one, it's just like IE6 all over again.

I was thinking about that. It's the IE6 drama all over again. Firefox apparently derailed from their path when the started from what was left of the great Netscape, they need to be more "Netscape" and less "Chrome". Their UI is nothing like "Firefox" now. As an UI/UX Designer, I find it appaling.

Giving Google so much power to decide the future of WWW with such decisions and with Edge going Chromium, is a very dangerous path for the future. Firefox needs to raise its game to fight it or else it will end like Netscape again.

schmatzler wrote:

- Webdesign in general. I don't want to get back to 640x480 and fifty iFrames for navigation, god no. But as a webdesigner, I hate building modern websites sometimes. Big sliders you have to scroll through, unneccessary whitespace, ginourmous fonts...modern websites look very pleasing to the eyes, but navigation-wise they can be a major pain. Mobile-first development has made menu structures worse in a lot of ways. Some designers put in mobile menus on the desktop version. Just stop it already! And I goddamn hate GDPR cookie banners! Politicians that are too old to grasp basic technical things should stay away from breaking the internet.

I could not agree more. I am an UI/UX Designer but I currently work as a Front-end web developer. One of my main complaints is the navigation, especially on mobile devices. My clients never seem to understand it and just want "pleasing designs to the eyes". Until they realize I was right telling them about how crap their navigation was. But, to be fair, in 2019 going mobile first is the RIGHT path to go because it not only makes web design for desktop easier, also helps with older browsers compatibility when you know that you can't go too fancy with jQuery (Bootstrap is ditching it already).

I just can't accept the "new" HTML5 tags, I find them redundant when you have ARIA roles for years.

bfcastello wrote:

But, to be fair, in 2019 going mobile first is the RIGHT path to go because it not only makes web design for desktop easier, also helps with older browsers compatibility when you know that you can't go too fancy with jQuery (Bootstrap is ditching it already).

In an ideal world, I would agree with this statement. In practice however, what I have seen is that development teams take shortcuts and do not make their design adjust accordingly for a desktop experience to the extent that it probably should. This usually means excessive whitespace everywhere (enough for a touch-screen interface, but really, far too much for use with a precision pointer like a mouse). As well, things like have already been noted here, for example where the mobile navigation gets left on (whether intentionally because "it's good enough" or accidentally because the team didn't know any better and/or desktop-browser testing was left to the last minute). Also god damned popup modals/banners everywhere. Echoing the sentiment above, fuck off with the cookie banners that take up 30% of the screen real estate. And then magically re-appear later on when I revisit the site some weeks later.

Take my comments with a grain of salt though, I'm just a disgruntled developer who is well underway to making the transition from front-end web development to backend development because I passionately hate the modern web and the development/design practices that accompany it. 😀

And on that note, the "software" I miss the most is the web from the late 90's / early 2000's. Heh. 😜

Living wrote:

https://i.ibb.co/0Gy83z3/Photo-Finish.jpg […]
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+1 😊

I just love Photo Finish 3.0, it made me a very happy camper for years - and I'm glad I kept the original manuals and install media.

Too bad it doesn't work beyond Win98SE/WinME; it now lives in my Win98SE gaming PC (at least I can be happy again that way).

Something else I miss are a couple of MIDI sequencers from Midisoft - Recording Session and Studio 4.0:

Once again, I used these for years editing and creating MIDI files; too bad they don't work beyond Windows XP 🙁

I wouldn't say that I miss these the most but they are packages I used in college back in the 90s that I've never seen since and would be interested to revisit.

Integrated 7 Advanced (we just called it I7), a DOS based integrated package similar to MS Works. Even searching for it today yields little or no information. Couldn't even tell you who created which hinders searches somewhat.

Samna IV (maybe VI, not sure), a word processor/spreadsheet we used under AIX 2.2.1. I believe there is a DOS version. Just curious really to see if the DOS version is as surreal an experience as the AIX build. Some of its spreadsheet results would be so far off you could swear someone was drugging your coffee. We opened one spreadsheet on three different terminals side by side (dumb terminals, yes I'm getting on in years) and got three different sets of results!?! I think this eventually became AMI then WordPro if its the same program I'm thinking of.

I miss hardware accelerated audio the most.
I miss proper 2D acceleration the second most.

I can't really think of any apps in particular that don't have much superior versions or replacements now except maybe 4NT.

IBM Web Explorer for OS/2 Warp

This is where the magic started for me back in 1995.

Also, mIRC 2.1:

Amazing times..