Post

Windows On Windows
@windowsonwindows.com

Before the Start menu & Taskbar, the Windows 95 team tested this UI. They found users had trouble deciding what each button on the “Taskbar” (at this point, called the Tray) did. E.g. to search Help, do you go to Find or Help? 😵‍💫 Did they make the right call scrapping this? 👀

8 reposts68 likes

Jocobo
@jocobo.bsky.social

has anyone ever gotten any genuine help from dedicated help buttons in software? maybe i'm too zoomer brained and don't know what troubleshooting was like before the internet but no way they were ever useful enough to dedicate a whole os-wide button to them right

Ruairi (rc55)
@rc55.com

Help buttons were pretty good, but a lot of us old farts ended up buying very thick books on whatever software we were using. Lots of fun was had with a 8cm thick book with an included CD with sample files for everything from Visual Basic to CorelDRAW!

Panda
@pandaramble.bsky.social

I remember Win95 Help a little and it was very extensive, but it was more of a manual than problem-solving steps. This was for people that interacted for the first time with a computer. Imagine a modern YouTube app would say in Help to swipe up on video to go full screen (this isn't documented).