Fun fact: You can still double click the icon at top left of an open window to close it (Edit: applies for Win32 applications that show the icon at the top left corner)
@@scopestacker9787 Because the Windows' file system changed to NTFS, and then it was possible to create files with 255 characters + 8 characters for the extension.
If I remember right, the FAT-entires only allowed 8.3 names, but they allowed longer names by cutting of the long name at the end and adding a tilde and a number at the end of name. The actual long name sat in separate directory-entries that did not follow the FAT-conventions (don't know exactly how that worked and I'm too lazy to check google).
Ah man, the 90's what a time that was. So glad I was a kid at the time and got to see the transformation of computing and the internet. My favourite period of computing by far
I remember it all too, seeing it all go from dos based to graphics and then the internet by the time i left school. How things really vamped up in the 90s and then into the 00s
From a technical perspective, Windows 95 was incredible. They were able to mix 16 and 32bit code to a good degree of compatibility and it worked on a vast array of hardware that had very little in common. They also did a good job of unifying the interface to a common set of elements, something that they haven't achieved since (Windows 10 is a mess). I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to work around the DOS naming conventions. I also think that the Start menu was a great idea. Prior to that, you had to navigate through folders to find applications, something you still had to do in Mac OS. Windows 95 also introduced 'wizards' which were a great idea, if over used. However it was a still a graphical shell around DOS and MS had been developing a much, much better operating system called NT which we the public wouldn't get until XP (Windows 2000 was only available to the 'enterprise'). Microsoft continued to develop two operating systems and most PC users were forced to use the inferior version, culminating with Windows ME which was unstable mess.
Windows 10 isn't a mess, everyone had Windows 2000 if you were interested in computers at all, even after Windows XP was released at least for awhile. And Windows ME is responsible for many modern Windows features we still use today and was only as bad as its base i.e. Windows 95/98 which were just as unstable.
@@donotryon9389 Windows 10 is horrific, what are you talking about? There's like three different interface standards fighting for dominance in this pile of trash.
ME and Vista had rough releases that were eventually patched to become stable and functional operating systems. But the initial experience is what is cemented in history for them.
Windows 10 can be pared down enough with visual tweaks and registry settings to behave almost identically to 7. The only time I have to mess with the new menu standard is the built in "night light" switch.
4:14, people also seem to forget that you could still close applications in Windows 3.1 (and likely in this build of windows) by double-clicking the Control-menu (the one that this - in the left-hand side, it's official name IS the Control-menu). This functionality is still in Windows 10 for apps that still use have a Control-menu and have the icon in the upper left. I remember when Firefox got rid of their Control-menu, my YEARS of still using it + double-click to close apps was finally broken, and only then did I REALLY start using the X to close apps. The only reason I ever learned how to close apps in this way was due to Windows 3.1's built-in mouse tutorial. If you actually do the more advanced tutorial after the basic mouse one, you can learn this secret of Windows that no one seems to remember. From time to time when window positioning messes up and you have no other way to move a window, clicking the control menu and using the Move command that way is still a valid way to reset a Window position if it ends up out of bounds and unreachable via other methods.
@@TheXev if you want to go back to the control-menu in firefox, you can enable "title bar" in customization, which adds a native windows bar to the top of firefox, and its icon works as a control-menu
No matter how many times I watch these development history videos, I never get bored watching them. I really am interested in learning more about Windows. Your videos are awesome 👏👍🏼
I started my degree in '95 and bought a new 32Mb Ram, 5.2Gb (corrected) hard disk and possibly a Pentium 1 processor computer. With the scanner and printer (2 separate machines) it came to about £2,000. To this day it’s my most expensive computer, even costing more than my 27” iMac. 95 was a great product and to this day was my favourite version of Windows as you could still do a lot of work in MSDos.
not wanting to sus you out but *50gb? in 95?* i'd imagine perhaps it was 5gb and even still it was a chonker, my computer at the time came with i think it was 350MB hard drive. everything else kinda checks out, 32mb ram was huge but not impossible in 95
Yet the Windows 3.1 button is STILL there, 25 years later. It is hidden, but it never went away. Go ahead, press the top left of a window on your windows whatever version. It is there. Love you OG win 3.1 button!!!
yes , in classic theme it is a little icon depend on a program , but in new themes it is invisible, but still there :D sometimes i used to dabble click on it to close the windows :) it is because of win 3.x habit :)
14:14 - That menu is still here to this day in Windows 10... as long as the application shows its icon up there. Chrome and Discord don't show their icon, and by extension, the menu.
@@aadisahni Also, you can shift-right click on the application on the task bar. Didn't realize you could just right-click anywhere on the window header to bring up the menu.
Not sure it it's already been mentioned, Michael, but those links to Dr. Watson, Tracker, etc. in the "middle" Start menu in 58s are links to running programs.
I was able to find build 347 on a dialup BBS so I snagged it and upgraded my main computer to it. It felt trailblazing as hell at the time (age 14) and I remember it essentially being the same thing as the official release. It felt cool as hell to be running Windows 95 before anyone else I knew, tbh. Not to mention it's way better than win 3.1
This was my first memory of the family pc at home, good old windows 95. My grandfather had windows 3.1 but I saw it after we had gotten the pc at home and we were visiting him. Just watched most of the series of this and what i appreciate most is seeing different builds and how much they changed over the development cycle. What ideas worked and which did not. Anyway enough talking, thanks again for this series :)
I really love those detailed, informative videos. I just discovered your channel a couple days ago and I'm really glad I did! Keep up the good content! :)
16:40 I would not say Briefcase was removed in Vista, as creating one was as simple as right clicking on an empty area of the desktop->New->New Briefcase (this also applies to Windows 7). You can re-enable Briefcase in Windows 8 and 10, but since you need a little hack to do that (well, simply giving a very specific name to a folder), you can actually say it's been "removed" (actually simply non accessible from the stock options of the GUI) from Windows 8 and 10.
When I went to CompUSA to see a demo of 95, the first thing I said was: “Huh, looks like a Mac!” The tech didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes said he’d been hearing that line all day. 😄
It seems like many people can claim various Windows versions to look like a Mac. Such as Windows Vista looking like Mac OS X and Windows 7's taskbar looking like the Mac dock, and such as Windows 11 looking a lot like Mac.
The thing I was waiting for the whole summer comes out two weeks before I need to stop watching these videos and go into high school. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
In 1994 my parents had a computer store and we were enrolled in the Microsoft Back Office program. They always sent us things to test, and one day a box came up that read "Microsoft Windows 95 Beta". We were beta testers of Windows 95 and it was a version very close to May, but it used to crash KERNEL32.DLL right after installation.
Windows 95 revolutionised the GUI look of Windows. From Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 was immense and every OS from Microsoft was slightly better up to XP, the Vista, 7 and 8 arrived which felt like going back to 3.1.
Fun fact. The Restore menu is still present on Windows 10 ever since Windows 3.1, even on applications that don't display an application icon. If you double click the Restore button in Windows 3.x, it's a shortcut to closing the application. This works on Windows 10. "Alt+Space" is the shortcut for the Restore menu, and this will bring up the restore menu on apps without the icon like Universal Windows Apps.
It's kinda funny that microsoft moved away from the 3 button start menu in favour of a single button and today many linux distrobutions have adopted a 3 menu style launcher (applications, places and system). The older gnome 2, as well as mate and, with tweaking, xfce use this kind of menu system.
I think it was very good decision. One button, one start... that’s why it was easy enough to use PC by everybody... you did not, know what to do, you get self teaching. Click start and it will teach you one the way... nowadays it is hard to tel. Dumb user press start or windows logo, they just don’t know what you are talking about...
@@TheKingTywinLannister yeah, the fact that it actually said "start" helped a lot. If people didn't know what to do then it was labelled as the place to start. From a design standpoint I supported the Vista start orb but from a usability standpoint I now think it was probably a mistake Though I was always bothered by how it said start but that was also where you went when you wanted to stop (aka shut down). Haha
i've always suspected that there was some meaning behind the windows 95 name besides the year of release. now i finally got it. it was "windows for the 95% of users" -- 95% of users will be confused by the floating taskbar so let's nail it to screen edges, 95% will delete the recycle bin and call tech support to restore it so let's glue it to the desktop forever.
The parent folder icon/function was added again on Windows 98/ 95 with the Desktop Update as the "up button" next to to the left and right arrow buttons. They removed it on Windows Vista and added again on Windows 8.
I remember memorizing every real folder name, e.g. "Progra~1" Program Files, "Startm~1" Start Menu, etc. I don't even know when they stopped haivng an 8.3 filename for everything, even in Windows7 you could still use syntax including Progra~1 and Progra~2 (for Program Files (x86) )
A Binary file isn't exclusively just assembly language it contains any sort of encordings and machine code. However a .bin file is different to a .exe file in the sense that its not an executable.
@sweetberries I dare to (partially) disagree...... Yes, one CAN put machine code in it, but the BIN-extension in my opinion just states "ANY binary data", (not only machine code). As binary is so universal, I tend to think of .BIN as "just a collection of bits, in a format that is only dictated by the program itself using it, not a prescribed format" . In essence: define the format yourself.
Also you can double-click the close menu (the control box on the left side of the title bar) to close a window. That's why the word close on the menu is in bold (it's telling you what the button will do be default if you double click it)
sings in the same theme song as the first few seconds of opening: "Well I bought it up... brought windows home and tried to boot it up.. but when I start it up.. it says my memory is not enough.." xD
I think the main reason why you could remove the sart menu and move it around in the second Chicago build was MS was experimenting with the taskbar in different positions and probably the simplest way to implement this (at the time) was to make the start menu as a windowed program. So more than likely this was for testing purposes and not actually a fully fledged feature they decided to later remove
My guess is that in the underlying code the modern day taskbar is still functionally a window, with some specific behaviour that restricts positions, sizes, etc.
It's interesting how the Start button started off as just an Icon with no "start" label, similar to what it is now. What goes around comes around, I guess.
This was great. I remember I had a beta version of Windows 95 running on my 486 in late 1994 or early 1995, I can't quite remember. I couldn't wait for it to be generally available ... Windows 3.x was okay for my first foray into graphical user interfaces, but it sure was clunky.
For the earlier builds, I see you were running those in Virtual PC 2007, so did you try installing the S3 Trio/64 drivers (for Windows 3.1) in those VMs to get better colour depths? For VirtualBox, just use its variant of the VBE9x drivers.
@ 4:12 - Hot tip a lot of people don't realize: that top left menu button is modeled after the space bar. This is why pressing Alt + Space opens this menu :) tl;dr: The "line" is the spacebar.
Can you please make videos about the history of Windows 1.0 (and MS-DOS)? I watched your video about the development of Windows 95 and I enjoyed it. I would like to know how did Microsoft actually develop MS-DOS and Windows 1.0, what hardware they used, was there a computer mouse for MS-DOS and how computers looked like back then. Thanks Vasja Stojkovic
You're wrong, Ethan. MS bought 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products (at $75,000). Then renamed it to MS-DOS. Some time after MS licenced MS-DOS to IBM under the PC-DOS brand. MS-DOS was never an IBM product.
Looks like the ">>" in that first build is actually in indicator that the item is a shortcut. That got replaced with the arrow on the icon itself later, I guess.
I think the icons with ">>" at the end of the name in Chicago 58s were links, which later got that little winding arrow in the bottom left corner of the icon. And because the Programs folder seems to actually have been on the desktop it didn't have that link suffix, but the network and File Cabinet icons were just links to the original file somewhere else on the hard drive.
The bars that you can drag around in build 58s are minimized (running) windows. This is a left-over from the 3.x days, where a running app's window could be minimized, and it would appear as an icon on the desktop. In Chicago, they changed this behavior to be a bar(an icon with text). Later they made those bars smaller (half height) and later they made the app appear in the taskbar instead and have no bar when minimized. However, even in Win 10, there are some conditions, where you as programmer can put some flags on a window, and it will appear exactly the same way. Similar, if you have an MDI app (not many of those in 2019) and minimize a child window inside the MDI parent frame, you will see exactly the same.
some trivia for you..i was at MS during the development of Chicago..the thinking internally for the name Win95 was that marketing wanted to sell on the fact that you have an old version of Windows (in the future year of 1998 for example) from the year 1995..it demonstrates how old your version is in time..so you need to upgrade etc..it was also borrowed from the car industry with a 1995 model of Windows ...although there was never any thought that Windows would be realized every year.. Second you mentioned in the change of the name for the "Recycle Bin" at the time MS was involved in threaten lawsuits from Apple with their trash can..MS legal was trying to figure out a way around it.. in early Alpha copies i played with the Start button flag image was shaped like an eyeball..one of the early issues was when you opened a document and changed the document then went to eyeball and selected shutdown it would go straight to BIOS without saving the doc... i was also behind the stage at the MS announcement on campus..
Hi Michael, I really enjoy your videos, they are very well made (high quality), and you are quite neat when making them, Thanks for the hard work. I want to ask you a favor, if i may, could you make "The History of Windows 3.11 Development" or "The History of Windows (for WorkGroups) 3.0-3.1-3.11 Development", I really would love to see a video about this well done, like the ones that you do. I already saw that you have the 95, 98, ME, XP, 7, 8, 10, and some of their beta builds. Maybe you could make a playlist for these videos, if that's not too much to ask. (Sorry about my english) Thanks again 👍
If you don't have a password set with Windows 95 your access to Microsoft Mail is limited. So it is important to have a password especially on a Local Area Network where you would be able to link up with other OS's up to XP.
Double click the top-left corner icon to close the window, that's what everyone I new did back then. Fun fact, still works today. Desktop represents a specific folder on the hard drive, where icon arrows denote a shortcut file, 'Programs' is a real folder so no arrows.
Not so far, try to build nice computer with Win 98 and you will notice it's not so bad as people remember or as kids think. You can just turn it on and start using it, almost no learning how something works, try this with Win 10, old people without experiences with modern computers are totaly lost in Win 10.
hard to believe its nearly 30 years old now, when you were looking at the 93 beta, i was thinking what class was in, and i remembered i may have been going into 1st year juniors at the time. So when this finally come out, i would have been going into year 5, it would be another two years though before i would ever see windows 95 funny enough!
In the 2nd build you showed you failed to mention and check out the 32-bit builds of Clock and Notepad. During this period they were transitioning from 16-bit DOS to 32-bit Windows.
The Build 58s Tray [the white panel next to the Start buttons] was an area for shortcuts, a bit like an early Quick Launch. Build 73 had an option to use the Tray for shortcuts or as the Taskbar, then they decided to make it the Taskbar officially.
Winver showing 4.0 is correct. Windows 95 is a name, like NT, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10. We're up to version 6. Which Microsoft just changed Windows 10 to read version 10.
12:06 if there is an 8 character limit for file and folder names in this version, then why are some of the program names in that menu more than 8 characters long?
It's so funny (and somehow amazing) that almost all of this is still there in Windows 11. When the taskbar is not available, windows still minimize to these draggable tiles. Run menu almost identical. File manager definitely based on the same codebase, if massively evolved. Top left program menu button still there (although not shown) in all standard taskbars (try double clicking there to close a window with a "normal" top bar), etc. Microsoft is the king of legacy support. I adore them for it.
Can you make a slideshow of the screenshots from the faces of Windows from 3 up to the latest build of Windows 10? As a transition video to let us see how Windows changes over time? As a summary of all the history developments of the OS versions. I watched it all and it is so great. Thanks!
Looking back, it's hard for me to believe just how young the internet and internet-based o/s are, even in 2023. It's not like 1995 was drastically different culturally than it is now (as opposed to say, 1955), it's fairly recent in many people's memories, and it's relatable and similar in many ways. It's also amazing to me how quickly computer tech has come along in that same time period. Just 6 years after Win95 came out, XP was released....and that was the o/s that even Win11 is loosely based upon, it changed the world of computing forever
That white area of the Chicago taskbar can contain stuff. Try dragging a file, icon, or even text from inside Write.exe to that space on the taskbar. It's a literal task try that can store stuff like how your real desk may have a tray for pens and paperclips.
By beta 1 they had the whole resource kit book (that was like 3 phone books thick) written that explained every piece and part and setup and configuration. I got rid of the book last year in a move, but its interesting to see how little has changed in 25 years. I'm pretty sure I had all of the betas and was a test dummy as a kid for Windows 95 since my family worked at intel and had ins at MS.
Access~1 !!! AHHHHHH omg omg omg THIS freaking madness, holly eff. and every Windows95 file had a 'real' filename that you needed to figure out via DIR /x for safe-mode and DOS usage. I actually used a Long File Names add-on for Windows & DOS pre-95, called "LFN" which left little 'filen~1.lfn' files in EVERY folder, I had those flooding my HD forever! haha.
great review I was waiting for years for that kinde of video :) many thanks! BTW what will happen if you and can you close the start menu in window mode, be clicking right little box (X) ? :) 15:20
Thanks for doing this - brings back a lot of memories. I have a suggestion - could you do the same talk about Win95 and the changes done - not focusing on the UI, but on the underlying main changes? To me, getting rid of DOS was the biggest change with Windows95 and this may be interesting for those who take protected mode for granted.
@@pawer_official1245 No - not only is DOS still in the latest version of Windows-whatever - backwards compatibility and all that, what changed in Win95 was the lack of needing DOS to boot the system. No more messing with config.sys and autoexec.bat and more to get Win3 to work - with win95 and the registry, Windows now became the memory manager and controller. You could still load old config.sys drivers, yes. Without that, MS would have lost to IBM.
It was more a DOS extender and DPMI server, as Windows 95 (and also the Windows 3.1 Enhanced Mode) not only integrates MS-DOS 7 kernal, but extends it.
I'm still on Windows 10. I'm 85 versions behind!
Dude, you're 1990 versions away, actually. Upgrade a.s.a.p!
Windows 10 is the latest windows
nice dad joke lol
@henry stickmin fr?
its a joke tho ;-;
Fun fact: You can still double click the icon at top left of an open window to close it (Edit: applies for Win32 applications that show the icon at the top left corner)
MarkusTegelane very useful when there's a close button on the top right
You can, but only on some applications. Newer Windows Apps & Some System Applications do not have this feature.
That's correct. Alt+Space still works, so does Ctrl+Esc.
Kevin Bhasi CTRL + ESC is for keyboards that don't have Windows key
So, CTRL+ESC today is for cool IBM Model M users out there, right.
It was called Recycle.Bin because (at the time) files could only be 8 characters long, with a 3 letter extension. Recycle = 7, Bin = 3
How did they write .java then
@@scopestacker9787 they didn't
@@scopestacker9787 Because the Windows' file system changed to NTFS, and then it was possible to create files with 255 characters + 8 characters for the extension.
@@jonasferraz yes but Java already existed at the time where most computers ran Win 95
If I remember right, the FAT-entires only allowed 8.3 names, but they allowed longer names by cutting of the long name at the end and adding a tilde and a number at the end of name. The actual long name sat in separate directory-entries that did not follow the FAT-conventions (don't know exactly how that worked and I'm too lazy to check google).
Ah man, the 90's what a time that was. So glad I was a kid at the time and got to see the transformation of computing and the internet.
My favourite period of computing by far
scorpian007 and I wasn’t even alive :(
@Among Us Impostor you shouldn’t even be alive with that username
Commuting was better in the 90s better flow of traffic
I remember it all too, seeing it all go from dos based to graphics and then the internet by the time i left school. How things really vamped up in the 90s and then into the 00s
Its interesting how minimizing windows would put them as movable tiles towards the bottom still exists in windows if explorer.exe is closed.
I think a few bits of the Windows code base hasn't actually changed since version 1.0
I never knew that existed still
@@bisquick3662 ordinarily you'd keep explorer running as there's no reason to close it
@@hanro50 interesting, i wanna find out!
@@hanro50 thats true the alt+tab code hasnt been changed but its design has changed (alt+tab existed in win1.0)
From a technical perspective, Windows 95 was incredible. They were able to mix 16 and 32bit code to a good degree of compatibility and it worked on a vast array of hardware that had very little in common. They also did a good job of unifying the interface to a common set of elements, something that they haven't achieved since (Windows 10 is a mess).
I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to work around the DOS naming conventions.
I also think that the Start menu was a great idea. Prior to that, you had to navigate through folders to find applications, something you still had to do in Mac OS.
Windows 95 also introduced 'wizards' which were a great idea, if over used.
However it was a still a graphical shell around DOS and MS had been developing a much, much better operating system called NT which we the public wouldn't get until XP (Windows 2000 was only available to the 'enterprise').
Microsoft continued to develop two operating systems and most PC users were forced to use the inferior version, culminating with Windows ME which was unstable mess.
Windows 10 isn't a mess, everyone had Windows 2000 if you were interested in computers at all, even after Windows XP was released at least for awhile. And Windows ME is responsible for many modern Windows features we still use today and was only as bad as its base i.e. Windows 95/98 which were just as unstable.
@@donotryon9389 Windows 10 is horrific, what are you talking about? There's like three different interface standards fighting for dominance in this pile of trash.
ME and Vista had rough releases that were eventually patched to become stable and functional operating systems. But the initial experience is what is cemented in history for them.
@@anessenator 'horrific' and 'pile of trash' is a very extreme over-statement
Windows 10 can be pared down enough with visual tweaks and registry settings to behave almost identically to 7. The only time I have to mess with the new menu standard is the built in "night light" switch.
Here is an interesting fact: you can still click the icon of an application to open the menu in today's windows versions.
4:14, people also seem to forget that you could still close applications in Windows 3.1 (and likely in this build of windows) by double-clicking the Control-menu (the one that this - in the left-hand side, it's official name IS the Control-menu). This functionality is still in Windows 10 for apps that still use have a Control-menu and have the icon in the upper left. I remember when Firefox got rid of their Control-menu, my YEARS of still using it + double-click to close apps was finally broken, and only then did I REALLY start using the X to close apps.
The only reason I ever learned how to close apps in this way was due to Windows 3.1's built-in mouse tutorial. If you actually do the more advanced tutorial after the basic mouse one, you can learn this secret of Windows that no one seems to remember.
From time to time when window positioning messes up and you have no other way to move a window, clicking the control menu and using the Move command that way is still a valid way to reset a Window position if it ends up out of bounds and unreachable via other methods.
@@TheXev if you want to go back to the control-menu in firefox, you can enable "title bar" in customization, which adds a native windows bar to the top of firefox, and its icon works as a control-menu
It only works on win32 apps
One big thing you missed is the Task Bar in 58s. See that white space? You can actually put shortcuts in them.
Or create folders there.
Le Docteur nice!
I didn't know that, thanks for the info.
@@mojave5661 create folders? Now this is really cool
00:58
Looks like ">>" suffix was a predecessor of a shortcut arrow overlay icon
The Windows 3.1 style button is called the program menu button. I learned that in the Windows 3.11 tour.
No matter how many times I watch these development history videos, I never get bored watching them. I really am interested in learning more about Windows. Your videos are awesome 👏👍🏼
I started my degree in '95 and bought a new 32Mb Ram, 5.2Gb (corrected) hard disk and possibly a Pentium 1 processor computer. With the scanner and printer (2 separate machines) it came to about £2,000. To this day it’s my most expensive computer, even costing more than my 27” iMac. 95 was a great product and to this day was my favourite version of Windows as you could still do a lot of work in MSDos.
not wanting to sus you out but
*50gb? in 95?*
i'd imagine perhaps it was 5gb and even still it was a chonker, my computer at the time came with i think it was 350MB hard drive.
everything else kinda checks out, 32mb ram was huge but not impossible in 95
Yet the Windows 3.1 button is STILL there, 25 years later.
It is hidden, but it never went away.
Go ahead, press the top left of a window on your windows whatever version. It is there.
Love you OG win 3.1 button!!!
yes , in classic theme it is a little icon depend on a program , but in new themes it is invisible, but still there :D sometimes i used to dabble click on it to close the windows :) it is because of win 3.x habit :)
@@intel386DX It's also in Linux distributions to this day. :)
only on desktop apps (not metro)
You can also doubleclick there to close the application, like you could in Windows 3.x.
@@smpark12 metro apps are mostly rubbish
Happy Birthday Windows 95
14:14 - That menu is still here to this day in Windows 10... as long as the application shows its icon up there.
Chrome and Discord don't show their icon, and by extension, the menu.
Nope, you can still access that menu by pressing alt + space or right clicking the titlebar
@@aadisahni Also, you can shift-right click on the application on the task bar. Didn't realize you could just right-click anywhere on the window header to bring up the menu.
@@Peekofwar yeah I'm surprised more people don't know about that since this comment section it filled with people taking about the icon
That build 81 actually has a modified boot screen, the original says "November 1993".
Were you running that VM on Windows XP or what happened at 10:09?
Yes he was, he needed Virtual PC 2007, most likely because it wouldn't run in VirtualBox.
Yeep, Those rounded top corners gave away that good ol' VirtualPC 2007 & XP combo right away
Ikr? XD
@@WalnutSpice
Probably an XP VM as well!
Maybe he couldn't install the beta os on virtual box maybe he used a capture card to record the video. He really used windows xp
Not sure it it's already been mentioned, Michael, but those links to Dr. Watson, Tracker, etc. in the "middle" Start menu in 58s are links to running programs.
Hi, MajorSky17!
I was able to find build 347 on a dialup BBS so I snagged it and upgraded my main computer to it. It felt trailblazing as hell at the time (age 14) and I remember it essentially being the same thing as the official release.
It felt cool as hell to be running Windows 95 before anyone else I knew, tbh. Not to mention it's way better than win 3.1
That bbs that you mention I imagine likely doesn't exist these days. You think so too sini?
Wow, you were very tech savvy.
This was my first memory of the family pc at home, good old windows 95. My grandfather had windows 3.1 but I saw it after we had gotten the pc at home and we were visiting him. Just watched most of the series of this and what i appreciate most is seeing different builds and how much they changed over the development cycle. What ideas worked and which did not. Anyway enough talking, thanks again for this series :)
I really love those detailed, informative videos. I just discovered your channel a couple days ago and I'm really glad I did! Keep up the good content! :)
Thanks so much for the comment! Glad you are finding the videos informative.
@@MichaelMJD MJD! The January 1994 Bootscreen of Chicago is Fake!
The first MS Chicago UI reminded me of Windows 10.
Fun fact 7:09: this behavior still happens to this day, if the explorer.exe is closed.
@FireRat 16 Those ones from Windows 3 1 functioned more like today's desktop icons.
The taskbar turned into a window it's a very interesting thing. Resembles the NeXTSTEP interface!
1995: Start Menu introduced:
2020: Start Menu still present in Windows 10 (even though I use ClassicShell). :-)
I use StartIsBack
@@Sciffyan same
Same
@@Sciffyan same
16:40 I would not say Briefcase was removed in Vista, as creating one was as simple as right clicking on an empty area of the desktop->New->New Briefcase (this also applies to Windows 7). You can re-enable Briefcase in Windows 8 and 10, but since you need a little hack to do that (well, simply giving a very specific name to a folder), you can actually say it's been "removed" (actually simply non accessible from the stock options of the GUI) from Windows 8 and 10.
When I went to CompUSA to see a demo of 95, the first thing I said was:
“Huh, looks like a Mac!”
The tech didn’t say anything, but the look in his eyes said he’d been hearing that line all day. 😄
It seems like many people can claim various Windows versions to look like a Mac. Such as Windows Vista looking like Mac OS X and Windows 7's taskbar looking like the Mac dock, and such as Windows 11 looking a lot like Mac.
The thing I was waiting for the whole summer comes out two weeks before I need to stop watching these videos and go into high school. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
you can watch his videos on your weekend
well, yeah...
In 1994 my parents had a computer store and we were enrolled in the Microsoft Back Office program. They always sent us things to test, and one day a box came up that read "Microsoft Windows 95 Beta". We were beta testers of Windows 95 and it was a version very close to May, but it used to crash KERNEL32.DLL right after installation.
22:59 I thought it’d play the Windows 8 logon sound for a second lol
These videos are so calming. What makes them that way? It’s hard to put a finger on it.
Windows 95 revolutionised the GUI look of Windows. From Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 was immense and every OS from Microsoft was slightly better up to XP, the Vista, 7 and 8 arrived which felt like going back to 3.1.
Great on giving history development for Windows 95 retro showcase
Fun fact.
The Restore menu is still present on Windows 10 ever since Windows 3.1, even on applications that don't display an application icon.
If you double click the Restore button in Windows 3.x, it's a shortcut to closing the application. This works on Windows 10.
"Alt+Space" is the shortcut for the Restore menu, and this will bring up the restore menu on apps without the icon like Universal Windows Apps.
It's kinda funny that microsoft moved away from the 3 button start menu in favour of a single button and today many linux distrobutions have adopted a 3 menu style launcher (applications, places and system). The older gnome 2, as well as mate and, with tweaking, xfce use this kind of menu system.
TheFake VIP I know right?
Well, Windows 10 has 3 buttons now.
I think it was very good decision. One button, one start... that’s why it was easy enough to use PC by everybody... you did not, know what to do, you get self teaching. Click start and it will teach you one the way... nowadays it is hard to tel. Dumb user press start or windows logo, they just don’t know what you are talking about...
@@TheKingTywinLannister yeah, the fact that it actually said "start" helped a lot. If people didn't know what to do then it was labelled as the place to start. From a design standpoint I supported the Vista start orb but from a usability standpoint I now think it was probably a mistake
Though I was always bothered by how it said start but that was also where you went when you wanted to stop (aka shut down). Haha
i've always suspected that there was some meaning behind the windows 95 name besides the year of release. now i finally got it. it was "windows for the 95% of users" -- 95% of users will be confused by the floating taskbar so let's nail it to screen edges, 95% will delete the recycle bin and call tech support to restore it so let's glue it to the desktop forever.
The parent folder icon/function was added again on Windows 98/ 95 with the Desktop Update as the "up button" next to to the left and right arrow buttons. They removed it on Windows Vista and added again on Windows 8.
I remember memorizing every real folder name, e.g. "Progra~1" Program Files, "Startm~1" Start Menu, etc. I don't even know when they stopped haivng an 8.3 filename for everything, even in Windows7 you could still use syntax including Progra~1 and Progra~2 (for Program Files (x86) )
isn't .bin a binary file for assembly language?
A Binary file isn't exclusively just assembly language it contains any sort of encordings and machine code. However a .bin file is different to a .exe file in the sense that its not an executable.
Yes, but for machine code
@sweetberries I dare to (partially) disagree...... Yes, one CAN put machine code in it, but the BIN-extension in my opinion just states "ANY binary data", (not only machine code). As binary is so universal, I tend to think of .BIN as "just a collection of bits, in a format that is only dictated by the program itself using it, not a prescribed format" . In essence: define the format yourself.
Also you can double-click the close menu (the control box on the left side of the title bar) to close a window. That's why the word close on the menu is in bold (it's telling you what the button will do be default if you double click it)
I really love these kind of videos!
At 10:19 you can see a windows xp prompt. Was Michael using windows XP as his main os in 2017?
0:01 MODERN OLD LOGO
I wish they at least kept the colors instead just blue squares lol
17:15: "Did you know... Double-click documents to quickly open them": I've been using Windows for ~25 years now and never knew this trick!! :OOOO
What do you mean? Double clicking is how you open any file, folder, or program in Windows using a mouse...
J T good job finding the joke
fyi the white bar on the bottom in the first version of Chicago you showed is a place you could put shortcuts in
sings in the same theme song as the first few seconds of opening:
"Well I bought it up... brought windows home and tried to boot it up..
but when I start it up.. it says my memory is not enough.." xD
I think the main reason why you could remove the sart menu and move it around in the second Chicago build was MS was experimenting with the taskbar in different positions and probably the simplest way to implement this (at the time) was to make the start menu as a windowed program. So more than likely this was for testing purposes and not actually a fully fledged feature they decided to later remove
My guess is that in the underlying code the modern day taskbar is still functionally a window, with some specific behaviour that restricts positions, sizes, etc.
Oh my gosh I love the startup sound! :O
It's interesting how the Start button started off as just an Icon with no "start" label, similar to what it is now. What goes around comes around, I guess.
This was great. I remember I had a beta version of Windows 95 running on my 486 in late 1994 or early 1995, I can't quite remember. I couldn't wait for it to be generally available ... Windows 3.x was okay for my first foray into graphical user interfaces, but it sure was clunky.
For the earlier builds, I see you were running those in Virtual PC 2007, so did you try installing the S3 Trio/64 drivers (for Windows 3.1) in those VMs to get better colour depths? For VirtualBox, just use its variant of the VBE9x drivers.
Fun fact: The current Microsoft insignia (the small squares with four colors) bears the same one as the Windows 95 Start logo ad.
22:47 Uhhhh noticed this like almost 4 years later but why is there two cursors???
@ 4:12 - Hot tip a lot of people don't realize: that top left menu button is modeled after the space bar. This is why pressing Alt + Space opens this menu :)
tl;dr: The "line" is the spacebar.
Can you please make videos about the history of Windows 1.0 (and MS-DOS)? I watched your video about the development of Windows 95 and I enjoyed it. I would like to know how did Microsoft actually develop MS-DOS and Windows 1.0, what hardware they used, was there a computer mouse for MS-DOS and how computers looked like back then. Thanks
Vasja Stojkovic
Agreed
MS-DOS was actually made by IBM as DOS (Disk Operating System) and Microsoft bought it from IBM and put MS which stands for Microsoft before it.
Ethan Stanis :O wow
...no?
You're wrong, Ethan. MS bought 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products (at $75,000). Then renamed it to MS-DOS. Some time after MS licenced MS-DOS to IBM under the PC-DOS brand.
MS-DOS was never an IBM product.
Looks like the ">>" in that first build is actually in indicator that the item is a shortcut. That got replaced with the arrow on the icon itself later, I guess.
10:03 did anyone also see the random Windows XP Luna Theme appear?
OS/2 was ahead of Windows 95 with all of those features.
I think the icons with ">>" at the end of the name in Chicago 58s were links, which later got that little winding arrow in the bottom left corner of the icon.
And because the Programs folder seems to actually have been on the desktop it didn't have that link suffix, but the network and File Cabinet icons were just links to the original file somewhere else on the hard drive.
Windows 95: here’s all this hype
Windows 11: here’s your OS and we are done developing new stuff
Also windows 11 is literally 10 with a skin
The bars that you can drag around in build 58s are minimized (running) windows. This is a left-over from the 3.x days, where a running app's window could be minimized, and it would appear as an icon on the desktop. In Chicago, they changed this behavior to be a bar(an icon with text). Later they made those bars smaller (half height) and later they made the app appear in the taskbar instead and have no bar when minimized. However, even in Win 10, there are some conditions, where you as programmer can put some flags on a window, and it will appear exactly the same way. Similar, if you have an MDI app (not many of those in 2019) and minimize a child window inside the MDI parent frame, you will see exactly the same.
some trivia for you..i was at MS during the development of Chicago..the thinking internally for the name Win95 was that marketing wanted to sell on the fact that you have an old version of Windows (in the future year of 1998 for example) from the year 1995..it demonstrates how old your version is in time..so you need to upgrade etc..it was also borrowed from the car industry with a 1995 model of Windows ...although there was never any thought that Windows would be realized every year..
Second you mentioned in the change of the name for the "Recycle Bin" at the time MS was involved in threaten lawsuits from Apple with their trash can..MS legal was trying to figure out a way around it..
in early Alpha copies i played with the Start button flag image was shaped like an eyeball..one of the early issues was when you opened a document and changed the document then went to eyeball and selected shutdown it would go straight to BIOS without saving the doc...
i was also behind the stage at the MS announcement on campus..
What if Microsoft would call "The Wasteful" instead of "Wastebasket"?
Hi Michael, I really enjoy your videos, they are very well made (high quality), and you are quite neat when making them, Thanks for the hard work.
I want to ask you a favor, if i may, could you make "The History of Windows 3.11 Development" or "The History of Windows (for WorkGroups) 3.0-3.1-3.11 Development", I really would love to see a video about this well done, like the ones that you do.
I already saw that you have the 95, 98, ME, XP, 7, 8, 10, and some of their beta builds. Maybe you could make a playlist for these videos, if that's not too much to ask.
(Sorry about my english)
Thanks again 👍
+1
If you don't have a password set with Windows 95 your access to Microsoft Mail is limited. So it is important to have a password especially on a Local Area Network where you would be able to link up with other OS's up to XP.
Hey Micheal, development of Windows 95 started, the day that Windows 3.1 came out! :)
In build 58s, the >> indicates a shortcut, meaning the icon is not a folder, but it points to an app somewhere else.
those minimize and restore aninmations look way better than what we have now!
Looks cool for the retro computing lover, but would look somewhat ludicrous in a present-day OS.
I was working on the Redmond Campus when 95 launched, 1993-2000.
Double click the top-left corner icon to close the window, that's what everyone I new did back then. Fun fact, still works today. Desktop represents a specific folder on the hard drive, where icon arrows denote a shortcut file, 'Programs' is a real folder so no arrows.
19:47 That is because the bin IS named like that in GeoWorks, and maybe the program was actually kinda copied over to Windows from GeoWorks.
Good job, Windows 95! 22 YEARS!!!
JanikTube HD I know it is finally old enough to drink
It just blows my mind watching this how far we've come
Not so far, try to build nice computer with Win 98 and you will notice it's not so bad as people remember or as kids think. You can just turn it on and start using it, almost no learning how something works, try this with Win 10, old people without experiences with modern computers are totaly lost in Win 10.
File Cabinet and Network have >>(the arrows) in their name because they were shortcuts and they didn't make the shortcut icon at that time.
I wonder if there is a utility to get that cool minimizing animation in the first release
hard to believe its nearly 30 years old now, when you were looking at the 93 beta, i was thinking what class was in, and i remembered i may have been going into 1st year juniors at the time. So when this finally come out, i would have been going into year 5, it would be another two years though before i would ever see windows 95 funny enough!
In the 2nd build you showed you failed to mention and check out the 32-bit builds of Clock and Notepad. During this period they were transitioning from 16-bit DOS to 32-bit Windows.
The Build 58s Tray [the white panel next to the Start buttons] was an area for shortcuts, a bit like an early Quick Launch. Build 73 had an option to use the Tray for shortcuts or as the Taskbar, then they decided to make it the Taskbar officially.
Winver showing 4.0 is correct. Windows 95 is a name, like NT, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10. We're up to version 6. Which Microsoft just changed Windows 10 to read version 10.
6.3*
@@emily7289 6.3 is 8.1, 10.0 is 10. 10.0 is not a name, it's the kernel version.
12:06 if there is an 8 character limit for file and folder names in this version, then why are some of the program names in that menu more than 8 characters long?
Maybe they made it longer in Windows 95 to show the feature existed? You couldn’t see it otherwise.
Another fun fact: You can double click a window title bar to maximize/restore it. It works from Windows 3.0 (not sure about the olders) up to 10.
It's so funny (and somehow amazing) that almost all of this is still there in Windows 11. When the taskbar is not available, windows still minimize to these draggable tiles. Run menu almost identical. File manager definitely based on the same codebase, if massively evolved. Top left program menu button still there (although not shown) in all standard taskbars (try double clicking there to close a window with a "normal" top bar), etc.
Microsoft is the king of legacy support. I adore them for it.
I didn't even notice this video was from 6 years ago now
Can you make a slideshow of the screenshots from the faces of Windows from 3 up to the latest build of Windows 10? As a transition video to let us see how Windows changes over time? As a summary of all the history developments of the OS versions. I watched it all and it is so great. Thanks!
Are the arrows on the icons perhaps indicating that they are shortcuts? I don't know if shortcuts existed at this time.
Looking back, it's hard for me to believe just how young the internet and internet-based o/s are, even in 2023. It's not like 1995 was drastically different culturally than it is now (as opposed to say, 1955), it's fairly recent in many people's memories, and it's relatable and similar in many ways. It's also amazing to me how quickly computer tech has come along in that same time period. Just 6 years after Win95 came out, XP was released....and that was the o/s that even Win11 is loosely based upon, it changed the world of computing forever
Excellent video dude!
Thank you!
Also i am pretty sure the interface may have been shared with the NT4 development, or even the same skin. hence the 4.0?
2:03 "So there might have been earlier builds"
Usability Testing, Build 34, Buils 40e, Build 57, Build 58g : Am i a joke to you?
At 10:11 when you slow it down really far you can see he is running virtual box inside a windows xp virtual machine
That white area of the Chicago taskbar can contain stuff. Try dragging a file, icon, or even text from inside Write.exe to that space on the taskbar. It's a literal task try that can store stuff like how your real desk may have a tray for pens and paperclips.
Can you run 3rd party programs in Windows 93/94 (aka Chicago) ?
Shortcuts:
1:34 Build 58s
9:47 Build 81
17:09 Build 189
22:09 Build 468
By beta 1 they had the whole resource kit book (that was like 3 phone books thick) written that explained every piece and part and setup and configuration. I got rid of the book last year in a move, but its interesting to see how little has changed in 25 years. I'm pretty sure I had all of the betas and was a test dummy as a kid for Windows 95 since my family worked at intel and had ins at MS.
Very enjoyable video! I watched it while eating a very late lunch.
I was still using Win 3.1 with Netscape in 1997. Finally switched over when someone sold me used Win 95 CD in '97.
Access~1 !!! AHHHHHH omg omg omg THIS freaking madness, holly eff. and every Windows95 file had a 'real' filename that you needed to figure out via DIR /x for safe-mode and DOS usage. I actually used a Long File Names add-on for Windows & DOS pre-95, called "LFN" which left little 'filen~1.lfn' files in EVERY folder, I had those flooding my HD forever! haha.
Happy 25th Windows 95!
I don't know why why i connect bluetooth speaker and open the video of this channel Your voice makes me cry
But I'm not crying anymore.
great review I was waiting for years for that kinde of video :) many thanks!
BTW what will happen if you and can you close the start menu in window mode, be clicking right little box (X) ? :) 15:20
8:16 I'm not 100% sure about this but I think the >> might mean it's a shortcut
Thanks for doing this - brings back a lot of memories. I have a suggestion - could you do the same talk about Win95 and the changes done - not focusing on the UI, but on the underlying main changes? To me, getting rid of DOS was the biggest change with Windows95 and this may be interesting for those who take protected mode for granted.
bruh but DOS was dropped in Windows XP
@@pawer_official1245 No - not only is DOS still in the latest version of Windows-whatever - backwards compatibility and all that, what changed in Win95 was the lack of needing DOS to boot the system. No more messing with config.sys and autoexec.bat and more to get Win3 to work - with win95 and the registry, Windows now became the memory manager and controller. You could still load old config.sys drivers, yes. Without that, MS would have lost to IBM.
It was more a DOS extender and DPMI server, as Windows 95 (and also the Windows 3.1 Enhanced Mode) not only integrates MS-DOS 7 kernal, but extends it.