I Miss Themes

The Linux users have arrived

"It looked horrible, it looked awfull - and it was mine" That hits sooooo hard!!!

They took our skins...

Everything became clean, greyscale and uniform, We have the same issue happening with architecture too, Everything used to be ornamental and unique in western cities, but now everything is grey, brick and square

A lot of the missing features in websites can probably be attributed to the Internet becoming advertiser -friendly. Embedded music players might violate copyright, custom uploaded images could be nsfw or hate speech, manually embedded links could lead to scams or screamers (this was common back in the day). It's not an excuse though, there should be more options for public-facing custom themes. I remember ten years ago Tumblr was still allowing a pretty loose amount of customization for your own blog, even if most people used the default dashboard. For all client-facing themes there's really no excuse at all. I want my YouTube music desktop player to look like those cool y2k ones! I want to have widgits and bubbles and custom sounds! I'm probably gonna root through windows 11 hacks and find ways to make it happen now.

minimalism kills creativity

"You WILL use our sanitized, soulless designs and you WILL like it!" -Every single corpo from 2010 and onwards

I am in 40's and this really sparked something in me that used to be pure enjoyment, excitement and adventure. You are right, the ability to not change things and contribute towards the community for other people to enjoy is lame. I made and did things for free for others to enjoy and got joy out of knowing that so many others are enjoying with things I made.

I remember ricing up Windows XP lol. We would buy magazines that had CDs attached to them with themes for everything.

Pillars of modern design 1: rounded corners everywhere. 2: a lot of padding and margin in evrything. 3: removing useful extensive features that dummies can not understand.

What we have now some call minimalism but i'd call it brutalism. It's just a utilitarian way to get on your PC and getting to work or consuming media or buying something without distraction or anything in between. No toys or anything to stop and see and appreciate from here to there. Just a dull gray hallway and doors. No nice parks, no nice public art, no nice decorations people put up for fun or to make the space more enjoyable to be in.

nostalgia hits different when you are in your 20s

I still can’t comprehend what happened to native Windows default programs like the Media Player and the Picture Viewer. Especially those are unusable nowadays. Often it feels like there are multiple default implementations for each, with one being more invasive than the next.

New windows is like a room with no furniture

I was born 10 years before you, so I definitely get it. I grew up through all the customizing. I used winamp, I made skins myself. I had a myspace profile and customized that too. That was fun. I learned HTML, CSS, and how to use programs like Photoshop and Gimp. I still find creative things to dabble in, but it is sad not being surrounded with as much that can be personalized with more than an accent color.

Man, this is the most nostalgia I’ve experienced all at once. The internet in its infancy was the bomb, dude. People AND COMPANIES cared about expressing themselves. I used to go as far as to downloading replacer programs along with theme packs off places like deviant art. There would always be so many unique options to pick from and there was always some new theme I had to try out. Ever tried custom shells back in the day? There were a few but man some of them were cool, like talisman desktop. Good times man. I’ll never forget those days.

Minimalism sucks so much but it's just so easy and safe to do compared to actual style

And discord wants you to PAY for customization, damn it's so over

Windows 98 had the best themes. Mystery, Space, Inside Your Computer, Travel, Nature... just thinking about it gives me nostalgia. We later upgraded our Windows 98 PC to XP and the old themes carried over in addition to the new XP ones. The early 2000s were an exciting time to be alive as the little computer-nerd boy I was. I wish I could go back, and I wish the new generations could have something just like that to experience today. Maybe they do? I hope so.

honestly this is the reason i love tumblr. you get to make ur blog/account/whatever u want to call it absolutely however u want with custom themes and other stuff. its amazing and its something websites and stuff dont do anymore :[