Some more often and some less, and some more prominently than others, but over time all Windows elements have been restored, both visually and in its operation and functions over the years. In some cases, such as Notepad and Microsoft Paint, it is true that we have seen periods of years go by with almost no movement in this regard, but still those from Redmond have taken care to update them for a while. part.

On the other hand, we’ve also seen a lot of changes regarding Windows elements, both individually in each of them and in the way they are organized within the operating system. This is generally in line with previous studies that believe these changes will translate into improvements in Windows usability, and probably many of them are extremely correct, but in many of these cases the intended improvement is diluted, at least in part due to the effect they have on users accustomed to on previous proposals and organizational criteria.

Now and as Asterix’s village, There’s a Windows feature that hasn’t changed in 30 years.. It is true, however, that it is used less today than it was then, and that the design of the window in which it is displayed has adapted to the successive design paradigms of the operating system. But its content and the way it is represented remains unchanged. And if this is already striking in itself, it is elevated to the category of surprising when we know that in reality this design was something temporary.

After all, as you can see in tweet shown above this paragraph, The graphical interface of the Windows formatting function has remained unchanged for almost 30 years. And yes, as I indicated earlier, it’s true that this tool is much less used today than it was in the mid-90s, when floppy disks were still quite a presence in our lives (oh my, floppy disks and it seems like was yesterday. .) , but even today it is still useful for formatting USB drives, partitions, new storage drives that we install in our system, etc.

Dave Plummer, a former Microsoft developer, was the creator of the formatting dialog and says he created it when The Windows NT GUI was modified to “modernize” it.so it shares a style with that of Windows 95. So, if memory serves, it refers to the jump from version 3.51, which still kept the visuals of Windows 3.1, to NT 4.0, released about a year after Windows 95, and from which I actually take the design paradigm.

Then, Plummer says, he sketched out (first on paper and then in code) the features the tool should have in NT 4.0 so that it could be used in beta builds of the new operating system. But he did it, as he himself states, without any aesthetic criteria.accounting for the fact that at some point between late 1994 and the launch of NT 4.0, someone responsible for the visual design of the operating system for workstations and servers (remember NT had Workstation and Server versions) took over this makeshift distribution and remade it.

Just right-click one of the storage drives on your computer and select “Format” to check it, What was supposed to happen between late 94 and mid 96 never happened. And since Windows XP “inherited” more elements of NT, among them this tool, what it supposedly never showed to end users of the operating system (and also to far fewer beta testers than today, since at that time the arrival of the Insiders program was still years away) , is still with us today.

In fact, of course, this begs the question, Does a makeshift project still maintain that status if it’s been going on for almost three decades? Or should we consider it definitive at this point? And whether it’s one or the other, will Microsoft respond to this revelation and surprise us with a “definitive” redesign in the short or medium term? It would certainly be a fun answer, although it would also be a shame to be without such an exceptionally veteran temporary design.