With some history lessons learned, let's try to move some pixels around!

Having only two shades of grey, I figured the lighter will work as "active window" and darker as "inactive window".

When working with resolutions as small as 640x480, you very quickly notice the importance of each pixel. After moving lots and lots of pixels around, I found a way to make windows look smoother and thinner, with no "pixel comb" on the sides.

Shortly after, while working on design for buttons, I realised that the best button style needs to use "dark grey" for the button face. That means active window has to be dark grey, too! That means that inactive window must be one shade darker, or black... But that looks ugly, so I had to find a different way to make it look "unattractive". No gradients, and darker font it is, then.

One of the most important interface aspects is a font. Replacing a random pixel font with a hand-crafted interface-aimed font makes it look less like a concept and more like a real OS.

🧵 5/6