alt Hacker NewsI keep staring at this image, hoping we could go back: https://stonetools.ghost.io/content/images/2026/02/123_001.p...
Information density, no decorative UI elements distracting you from the content, and keyboard navigability.
Replies
1313ed01 • today at 9:02 AM
I love the menus. Autodesk Animator from 1989 also has menus where the first letter is always unique. Also buttons and some other UI elements. I did not remember that UI convention from back in the day, but when I experienced it recently it made me sad modern GUI applications are never that well designed. Maybe it used to be common?
Also, despite the CPU being 1000x slower, redraws were extremely fast. If they weren't quite fast enough, then the combo of deterministic keyboard nav and a reliable type ahead buffer meant the user could queue up a burst of actions from muscle memory.