Old icons from windows 3.11 and 95 still on Windows 7!


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Who cares:p speed and stability is whats important. Who cares if some service exe-file has an old icon, or a never/seldom used dialog has an old icon.

I'll join you, if we bundle our networking cards to use the same ip, we'll get double the strength ;)

Bahaha...that's great. Best post I've seen all day (including the "I wish I could punch someone in the throat via tcp/ip" comment)

Lol.

Somewhat off-topic, but why even include something like grpconv in the first place anymore? It's just clutter these days, right?

I was thinking the same thing. Upgrading from Windows 3.1 (the only point of grpconv) hasn't been supported for quite some time now.

One word.. Beta.

That's what people said when the old font dialog box was discovered in Vista betas.

That's what people said when the old font dialog box was discovered in Vista betas.

you mean the deprecated font dialog, only left there for the peopl who are stuck in th past and can't figure out the advanced feature o drag and drop or simply, right clicking...

you mean the deprecated font dialog, only left there for the peopl who are stuck in th past and can't figure out the advanced feature o drag and drop or simply, right clicking...

I guess those people have figured it out by now, as that dialog box has finally been removed entirely from Windows 7.

WHY is that even IN Windows 7? Seriously. I know Microsoft is obsessive compulsive about backwards compatibility, but they should really take stuff like that out.
It's not really harming you, and it is helping provide support for waaaay old applications that otherwise wouldn't function fully.

To put it another way: don't be compulsive about cutting stuff when it means that as a side effect you'll wind up breaking someone by your action that would have been fine by your inaction. :)

Again, pick and choose your battles. :)

I'm waiting for Win 8, where hopefully Microsoft does a rewrite of everything from the ground up.

then prepare to be disappointed

I wish they started fresh with Windows 7 but unfortunately they have not.

fortunately they haven't not , enough of breaking stuffs

I do not care what the Icons look like as long as Microsoft comes out with a reliable, fast, inexpensive OS.

+1

Well it's not surprising. MS is very big on preserving backward compatibility.

I'm not sure it's a good idea, but if it doesn't mess with the user experience, then fair enough.

well your post are'nt surprising either :rolleyes:

Some of you fail to realize why they include those low resolution Icons... SAFE MODE -- And Fall back 8bit or 16 bit driver--VGA Compatible Mode- Now granted some of those programs are no longer in use. Now before you go and argue-- OH MY COMPUTER DOES FINE IN SAFE MODE and does 16bit or 32 bit Color in Safe Mode.

Let us say that all video cards have to be VGA Compatible- But just as an example-- NEOWIN decides to start making their own video cards- NEOWIN ULTRA FANCY CARD--- Now this card is VGA Compatible-but did not make it in the lineup to include a driver built into windows... So what does windows do with it since you would not be able to see the icons because they have too much color- So they include the Low Resolution Icons so you can get to where you can install your new NEOWIN Video card drivers ... Just an example that many of you who say get rid of them should know--

But I do agree though some can be removed-- But then again most of those small ones takes less than 1mb for the whole .dll file or Icon file.

Edited by redvamp128
Every time I see one of these stupid threads, I honestly wish I could punch someone in the throat via tcp/ip. Seriously.

LOL... Nice one :)

Yeah it's pointed at me, but nonetheless is a good joke, we all should have a good sense of humor if we are to accept other people comments on a topic of ours, so again nice one :)

But I would like to say this..

I like Windows 7, I really do..

It's very stable for a pre Beta OS, and have some small but awesome new features, So I'm going to buy Windows 7 if it keeps this way until RC..

My point is that some legacy stuff just looks bad and ugly on a modern OS like Windows 7 and it's high resolution icons..

If it can't be fixed or changed, I'm not going to give a bad name to 7 because of it, I already have made some people have a look at windows 7 and they loved it..

I just wanted to see more windows 95 stuff removed from Windows 7, but I also understand the compatibility problem that may bring some remove of old files..

Edited by Digitalfox
Changing the icon of, for instance, winhlp32 is useless... that format isn't supported anymore. Another example is grpconv - what's the point of updating a icon for a tool used to convert Windows 3.x program groups?

I'm one who hates inconsistency and despises it every time I see an old icon or an inconsistent UI element in any program, not just Windows. I always thought these icons needed changing. However, after reading some of these posts and seeing Brandon Live's comment, I understand now why they will never get updated and that it would be a waste of time when there are bigger fish to fry.

Wouldn't they be able to remove the code which relates to these legacy, now redundant, applications and just remove them completely?

It would be amazing to see proper new icons for them all, but like many have said, they are hardly ever seen and Microsoft have more important work to do.

I'd love to see RegEdit's icon updated though ;) Let's face it, most technology enthusiasts / programmers may use it frequently :D

That's what people said when the old font dialog box was discovered in Vista betas.

Well the font folder has been given a nice facelift, and you finally get font previews in its thumbnails. (Did they use DirectWrite to render those?)

Well it's not surprising. MS is very big on preserving backward compatibility.

I'm not sure it's a good idea, but if it doesn't mess with the user experience, then fair enough.

I would be satisfied if they update all the icons everyday users, plus power users, encounter on a daily basis. That Advanced Attributes dialog is one example, regedit is another example, some of the toolbar icons in certain MMC snapins are another example, etc.

@Panda X: Which icons? I thought most of the really high res icons are in imageres.dll

Well the font folder has been given a nice facelift, and you finally get font previews in its thumbnails. (Did they use DirectWrite to render those?)

I would be satisfied if they update all the icons everyday users, plus power users, encounter on a daily basis. That Advanced Attributes dialog is one example, regedit is another example, some of the toolbar icons in certain MMC snapins are another example, etc.

@Panda X: Which icons? I thought most of the really high res icons are in imageres.dll

The outdated icons are in moricons.dll. The high-res are still in imageres.dll

It's not really harming you, and it is helping provide support for waaaay old applications that otherwise wouldn't function fully.

To put it another way: don't be compulsive about cutting stuff when it means that as a side effect you'll wind up breaking someone by your action that would have been fine by your inaction. :)

Again, pick and choose your battles. :)

I figure if you're one of the 5 people whose life depends on running Windows 3.1 apps on their dekstop, Windows 7 probably isn't for you. You can maintain an old WinXP box, or even run a VM. If you complain that Windows XP won't be supported anymore, I will point out that their Win3.1 software probably hasn't been supported for years either.

Anything pre-95 should honestly be pulled out of the OS and buried. It would remove clutter and complexity that really shouldn't be there, and improve the OS for the 99.999% of the users that don't have any use whatsoever for Win3.1.

At what point would you move-on, anyway? Should Win3.1 still be supported by the core OS in 2015? 2025? 2050?

I figure if you're one of the 5 people whose life depends on running Windows 3.1 apps on their dekstop, Windows 7 probably isn't for you. You can maintain an old WinXP box, or even run a VM. If you complain that Windows XP won't be supported anymore, I will point out that their Win3.1 software probably hasn't been supported for years either.

There are plenty of venerable and RELIABLE banking or medical applications that have been designed decades ago and are still happily running today.

When I see my bank account manager, he uses some sort of Borland C++ 3.1 built application on top of a desktop running XP

Anything pre-95 should honestly be pulled out of the OS and buried. It would remove clutter and complexity that really shouldn't be there, and improve the OS for the 99.999% of the users that don't have any use whatsoever for Win3.1.

Let's take an example: let's remove grpconv.exe: One 20 Kb executable in C:\Windows\System32 and two keys in the registry base (.Grp and MSProgramgroup) to be removed.

I don't know the Windows Team development procedures at Microsoft but my guess is that

* a Change Request must be defined,

* assigned to a Developer by a Product Manager.

* The Developer does his job,

* then ask for a Code Review for the Validation of his changes

* and finally commits the changes to the Windows Source Code to be taken into account by the next build.

* let's not forget that the QA team must validate the changes according to the specifications defined in the Change Request.

All in all, let's say it will take half-a-day for the whole procedure for a 20 KB economy.

I would say that the bang for the buck ratio is abysmally close to 0 and that half-day should be used for something more usefull ...

At what point would you move-on, anyway? Should Win3.1 still be supported by the core OS in 2015? 2025? 2050?

Funny, the end of the support of Windows 3.1 as an embedded operating system was only one month ago.

it was even on the front news page.

Another article of the BBC about the usage of Windows 3.1 as embedded system

If you dislike Windows so much - realize it will never be perfect for you, and just move to Mac OS X or something.

Actually I've already got a Ubuntu box up and running :)

It's not that I dislike Windows, I dislike particular versions of Windows (ME, Vista)

The first computer I can remember other than the commodore 64 was a Win 95, replaced by Win ME. Win ME made anything look good (welcomed XP)

With junk like Vista, I figured it'd make Windows 7 be welcomed/look good, but upon further examination this doesn't seem so. I'm sticking with XP until I can't upgrade the hardware any further because drivers aren't available

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