Windows XP Professional
116 comments
·August 7, 2025mmastrac
OptionOfT
I love reading about old UI interface guidelines, and how much research was done to make it useful to the user.
Now it's all about how to make it useful to the company.
<YOUR FILES ARE NOT BACKED UP, WOULD YOU LIKE TO TURN ON ONEDRIVE?>
<Yes> <Maybe later>
Anyway, the links in that post have deteriorated.
Here's the link to Raymond Chen's blog: https://web.archive.org/web/20190218080905/https://blogs.msd... (shame on MS for redirecting you to another page when showing you a 404, which make it harder to find the original URL).
Updated link to Raymond Chen's blog, where the comments have been 'retired': https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080619-00/?p=21...
And the 2 imgur links (same issue with the redirecting...):
https://web.archive.org/web/20230509182201/https://i.imgur.c...
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20230507201645/https://i.imgur.c...
jackero
There was an economies of scale back then with OS-level UI components.
If Microsoft spent money on UX research that improved its UI controls, it would benefit a lot of people. Essentially the cost of that research was bore by all application developers.
The problem now? Every company is designing their own UI components. Every company has to bear the cost of UX research individually. It’s a lot of wheel re-inventing. UX easily takes a backseat.
maplant
I could tell instantly in the loading screen because the three blocks in the progress bar move smoothly across it.
wibbily
Man nothing drives me further up the wall than when a nice progress indicator with discrete segments gets animated with a lazy `to { rotate(360deg); }` etc[1]. It is my molehill to die on
[1] https://cdn.dribbble.com/userupload/41647820/file/original-8...
CrimsonCape
You know talking about progress bars, it takes a lot of confidence to program a linear progress bar. You think you know when loading will be complete and think you know can break down the incremental progress made during loading.
Instead we get these spinning wheels that are like "maybe in the future this wheel will stop and we will have a return value." No confidence whatsoever.
I know this is true because Apple tries to implement progress bars in IOS like real chads. But their progress bars are just fake. They are a cheap animation all the way up to 90% and just stop moving until the progress is actually complete which could be 5 seconds of 90% and 40 seconds of the last 10%. So they think they are chad but lie.
metalliqaz
you just don't like how it looks, or is there something else wrong with it?
jkingsman
Yup, and on just about every system I used there was a stutter in it about 75% of the way through.
randunel
Ugh, all the links in that comment are dead, imgur and microsoft alike :(
tczMUFlmoNk
A classic article about a no-delay solution to this problem, not mentioned in the linked thread:
https://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega...
rao-v
Lovely and simple … you’d think it would have become the best practice in most libraries by now
webstrand
It also fails the "hold right click" test, Windows didn't popover context menus until right click was released. Instead, for file, it did a kind of "contextual drag and drop".
stronglikedan
If you have another option with a submenu on either side of Send To, the Send To menu will close. It closes as soon as you move over any item with a submenu. But it just so happens that Send To is typically by itself, so it's a good test regardless.
alnwlsn
There's something like this in every desktop Linux I've tried, which made it feel like using the mouse was in some way weird and broken. But I've been using it for long enough now that it either got fixed, or more likely, I got used to it. I don't even remember what it was, something about clicking drop down menus a certain way?
Reminds me of the first time I ever used classic Macintosh System OS, and how you have to hold the mouse button down to keep menus open. It doesn't take much to throw everything off.
rayiner
Crazy how much UI still fails this test.
tux3
This is a nice replication of the WinXP UI in JS (it is not a virtual machine running in your browser).
rasengan
It is slightly more than just a UI since all of the applications actually work (you can save and reload for example and still see your previous files too).
It seems functional to me!
Kudos to the author!
easton
If you want the real thing: https://lrusso.github.io/VirtualXP/VirtualXP.htm
(takes less memory than Miro, at least in Firefox :D)
jeffhuys
Works great! Tested on Orion. Sad to see I couldn't delete system32.
autoexec
no spider.exe tho
devnull3
Win XP remains my favourite OS till date. I was in college and getting hands on a pirated copy back then makes me so nostalgic.
There was a cambrian explosion of tools to customize the look and feel. TweakXP pro is the one I remember. All pirated off-course.
dijit
I remember being extremely envious of the "Alienware theme" that you could only get with an actual Alienware machine.
That was surprisingly short-lived though, such custom experiences are uncommon these days. Seems like nobody is theming Windows- they just fill it with crapware.
tracker1
I preferred the Media Center Edition theme myself... kept a copy of it for a long time to drop into XP and other windows flavors.
accrual
I remember those themes - the sleek "glowing" blue accents on shiny silver and black UI elements looked so fancy back then. There was a Windows Media Player skin too if I recall correctly.
rayiner
How was it better than Win2K?
AlecSchueler
Lots of relatively small UI improvements that all added up. I honestly never noticed them until years later when I had to use a slightly older machine and had an "oh wow" moment.
floxy
OS/2 is the nostalgic one for me.
voidUpdate
I was hoping this was emulation, like the windows 95 in js that exists, but its more of a simulator. The web browser doesnt work and the minesweeper game uses a text emoji instead of a picture for the face
twalichiewicz
Turns out you can just click and drag to select everything in Minesweeper, and it reveals all the hidden numbers. There’s even a sneaky little “debug” text in the bottom-left corner that shows where all the bombs are.
jasperry
I also hoped it was actual emulation. I could tell it wasn't when I saw the bootup progress bar moving more smoothly than it ever did in real Windows :)
LetsGetTechnicl
I was able to get the "browser" to work by opening the Flash Player and clicking the link to the Ruffle website. It's just an embedded view so some sites don't work (I think dependent on your browser settings.)
sunaookami
Vast majority of sites disallow embedding nowadays.
personalityson
I was able to create a vbs script (MsgBox "Test"), but it keeps opening in Notepad...
DustinBrett
Seems like v86 will be the king of this for a while longer.
philipwhiuk
Yeah I was gonna navigate to the website and try to recurse :(
ch_123
I feel slightly ashamed that I spent enough time using Windows XP that was able to spot that this was a clone based on the fonts and shadow effects alone.
Nice effort though.
accrual
It could be a badge of honor! You used the system so much that clones can't fool you. To be fair, Windows text rendering does have a very specific look that's difficult to perfectly replicate without using the actual Windows APIs.
I'm sure some here could look at a screenshot of the same text rendered on Windows, macOS, and Linux and tell them apart.
jp1016
This brings back so many memories I still remember having a cd with the serial key written right on it. Even now, that key is stuck in my mind qqwd7-8gr47-x9rcp-jjwh7-qpgqq
thecosmicfrog
"WIN32.RUN might have unexpected behaviors on browsers that are NOT Chromium-based (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.)"
What would be the reasons this wouldn't run on Firefox? Genuine question from a non-web developer.
tetris11
it's not an emulator -- it's a (very realistic) re-implementation of the desktop using standard JS and CSS. Flash is run through Ruffle. Edge opens pages using native iframes.
Essentially the browser split comes from the usual browser split: discrepancies in JS and CSS implementations
pjc50
This means the developer hasn't tested it on Firefox. Platform compatibility is way better than it used to be but you still occasionally get differences in supported APIs or interpretation of the standard.
BizarroLand
I ran it in icefox without an issue, even got a few games of minesweeper in.
The only issue I had was the mobi reader wouldn't work, but that was fine with me.
1970-01-01
Back when the Start Menu made sense. It wasn't rose colored glasses, it was functional.
accrual
Yep. No web search. No ads or news or weather or links to apps that aren't actually installed. Opens virtually instantly. Lots of stock customization options (icon size, icon order, pinned icons, classic vs XP style, all shortcuts toggleable).
The only thing I miss is the search bar - I became quite used to that with Windows 7.
sunaookami
The Windows XP start menu sucked, no search function and it was common to have 3 columns full of shortcuts with folders inside folders. It only got better with Windows Vista.
Catbert59
Will call our IT support tomorrow and start this as a full screen.
That will be fun in the office :-)
NitpickLawyer
That's actually not a bad April Fool's prank.
okincilleb
This is awesome! I recreated Win XP for my personal website a few years ago (https://www.sohailsayed.com/), but this completely blows it out the water on functionality.
I absolutely love just how much depth there is to the functionality in this (from being able to use apps like word, or being able to drag and move around icons on desktop).
Brilliant!
sangeeth96
Real thing is possible on https://copy.sh/v86/ I think but need an XP disk image[1], not readily available at the moment (probably for copyright reasons?).
yakz
Windows 2000 in a JS VM is available: https://bellard.org/jslinux/
zamadatix
Windows 2000 is also available in the above (with more pre-installed apps).
How can you tell that any Windows or Mac clone UI is a re-implementation? Easy: try to move your mouse diagonally into the Send To menu after letting it pop up. If the send-to menu closes as you mouse over the item into the submenu, it's a clone. If the menu stays up even if you brush over another menu item, it's either real or a Good Clone. :)
For the fun history, @DonHopkins had a thread a few years back:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17404345