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Windows Visual Styles

What is your favorite Windows Visual Theme?

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5.3% (1 vote)


Windows is a beautiful system. Nowadays, it doesn’t follow its old visual styles, but back then, the looks of Windows Vista and 7 were very great. This was a thread I have been planning to do since I created my failed Physical Media thread. It’s the same formula as that thread. I will count betas cuz, why not? They have unique styles!

Whistler: This might be a fan favorite. The Watercolor theme was a beta to the Luna theme in XP. In my opinion, it looked better. There were little squares on the top bar, and a cute blue theme that you can switch to Olive, Silver, and Dark Blue.

Windows XP: The basics of the Windows Visual Theme. It sported a blue color with 3D Shading, and a cute bliss background (that not only became a meme, but was also on Whistler). It was just very great. You could switch between Olive and Silver too.

Longhorn: Basically Luna, but with the experiment of Aero. We’ve got Jade and Luna and I forgot the third one. It just looked awesome!

Windows XP Tablet PC Edition/Media Center Edition: Here’s where things start getting interesting. This is my personal favorite. I even mimicked the theme on Windows 10! It’s Luna but looks like Aero! And with a better Bliss background than Luna.

Windows Vista: This might be the best theme ever. A nice combination of Green, Blue, and Yellow, So many ribbon logos, great taskbar, great darkness, great use of Aero, best use of colors, I like everything about this visual theme! This is what started my Windows YT channel! So why I don’t hate Vista? I actually grew up with it! Maybe it was a new PC at the time. I tried to do it on VM and it works! There’s no lag or BSODs! So why hate it?

Windows Embedded POSReady 2009: I don’t get it. A version of Windows XP on 2009? Weird, right? Anyways, this Visual Theme is great too! It’s the Royale theme but darker. This operating system was made for life support, and many people like it!

Windows 7: The same as Vista, but focuses more on the color blue. With beautiful glass textures, and some beautiful use of blue. The theme is not as good as Vista’s, but it also defined my childhood.

Windows 8.x: Nothing to say here, just Windows 7’s theme but modernized. Overall, the Visual Style is decent

Windows 10: This is kinda boring. Only two themes, Light and Dark. You can’t change the Visual Style. (At least not without paying not to Microsoft) Fortunately, there’s Classic Shell, which is a great program to edit your taskbar, and start menu. I put my theme to Royale, and I am keeping it.

So, which one will you choose? And this time, not only is it very recommended to say why, but I have disabled multiple choices

EDIT: Removed a piece of Engrish

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I prefer windows 7 since ive been using windows 7 for along time and windows 10 seems rather boring and not as beutiful as windows 7 in my opinion as it looks alot more simplistic
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Oof... am I strange for liking Windows 9x and Windows 2000's appearance more than the others? What I loved about those were they were strictly utilitarian and easy to navigate. I am OK with WinXP through 7 because they keep that key concept in mind, though XP's Fisher Price default look is ugly and Vista/7 are more on the modern, pretty side and use quite a lot of resources to render the effects. I do not like the "mobile/tablet" style that comes later on: a Start menu just isn't a start menu anymore, it's all big pictures and scrolling instead of compact lists, which to me is not very intuitive. It comes off looking like a high school student's Web 3.0 project. I like things spelled out instead of symbolized.

I don't have a Windows OS at home, but in time I may get a new computer in which I will choose a W7 theme out of all that are listed.

Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
Originally posted by Counterfeit
Oof... am I strange for liking Windows 9x and Windows 2000's appearance more than the others?

If you are so am I, I'm a big sucker for these as well. I grew up with the 2000 design - despite my first OS having been Windows XP, it had an option to use the older styles which we had activated and I loved it a lot. In contrast, I thought XP's original design was rather ugly and a bit too "showoffy", if that makes any sense, and that only got worse with Windows 7, although that system looks objectively better. I'm much more of a simplistic design person if you can tell, which is why Windows 10's design is my favorite, nostalgia aside. Windows 8 gets a no from me though just for the lack of a Start menu.
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
Originally posted by Koopster
I grew up with the 2000 design - despite my first OS having been Windows XP, it had an option to use the older styles which we had activated and I loved it a lot.

That's why I loved and grew with XP in my childhood - while it was good at that time, 2000's design is ultimately better and more simplistic and I also had a variety of colors I played with a lot. Vista was also an OS I appreciated but not very much due to the slowness. Windows 10 is just a system that caught my attention for obvious reasons, and I still have it to this day.
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
Don't get me wrong, but there was something unique about Vista's design... Maybe it was the taksbar's design? Or was it the wallpaper? I don't know, but i love that one

Shame the OS itself is trash

There are others in the list i like too (LongHorn, XP, 7, 8.1), but Vista is the one i'm attached with



7 is just bufferd Vista lol
Longhorn will forever be one of the most interesting developmental periods of Windows GUI-wise. So many different themes were implemented but never used: Plex, Jade, Slate. Personally, I really love Plex's bold but simple design, keeping with XP's user friendly approach to UX.

Aero was the result of Longhorn: a fresh UX for the then-modern era that shows how far we've come in personal computing technology (to have literal windows displayed on our desktops, for example). It was one of the last popular uses of skeuomorphic designs before minimalism took over the 2010s.

However, nothing will compare to the classic UI found on Windows 95/98. Sure, it's a bit clunky by today's standards (having so many menus and unnecessary options). However, it was easy to pick up and learn how to use a PC without much effort. Where do I want to go today? When do I start?
(plus the icons were just really cool ok)