Intro
Components
Button
Checkbox
OptionButton
GroupBox
TextBox
Slider
Dropdown
Window
Title Bar
Window contents
Status Bar
TreeView
Tabs
TableView
Progress Indicator
Field borders
Button
Checkbox
OptionButton
GroupBox
TextBox
Slider
Dropdown
Window
Title Bar
Window contents
Status Bar
Title Bar
Window contents
Status Bar
TreeView
Tabs
TableView
Progress Indicator
Field borders
Issues, Contributing, etc.
98.css
A design system for building faithful recreations of old UIs.
Intro
98.css is a CSS library for building interfaces that look like Windows 98.
See more on GitHub.
Hello, world!
This library relies on the usage of semantic HTML. To make a button, you'll need
to use a <button>. Input elements require labels. Icon buttons rely on
aria-label. This page will guide you through that process, but accessibility is a primary
goal of this project.
You can override many of the styles of your elements while maintaining the appearance provided by
this library. Need more padding on your buttons? Go for it. Need to add some color to your input labels?
Be our guest.
This library does not contain any JavaScript, it merely styles your HTML with some CSS.
This means 98.css is compatible with your frontend framework of choice.
Here is an example of 98.css used with React, and
an example with vanilla JavaScript. The fastest way to use 98.css is to import it from unpkg.
an example with vanilla JavaScript
You can install 98.css from the GitHub releases page, or from npm.
Components
Button
A standard button measures 75px wide and 23px tall, with a raised outer and inner border.
They are given 12px of horizontal padding by default.
You can add the class default to any button to apply additional styling,
useful when communicating to the user what default action would happen in the active window if
the Enter key was pressed on Windows 98.
When buttons are clicked, the raised borders become sunken.
The following button is simulated to be in the pressed (active) state.
Disabled buttons maintain the same raised border, but have a "washed out"
appearance in their label.
Button focus is communicated with a dotted border, set 4px within the contents of the button.
The following example is simulated to be focused.
Checkbox
Checkboxes are represented with a sunken panel, populated with a "check" icon when
selected, next to a label indicating the choice.
Note: You must include a corresponding label after
your checkbox, using the <label> element with a for attribute
pointed at the id of your input. This ensures the checkbox is easy to use with
assistive technologies, on top of ensuring a good user experience for all (navigating with the tab key,
being able to click the entire label to select the box).
Checkboxes can be selected and disabled with the standard checked and disabled
attributes.
When grouping inputs, wrap each input in a container with the field-row class. This ensures
a consistent spacing between inputs.
OptionButton
Option buttons can be used via the radio type on an input element.
Option buttons can be grouped by specifying a shared name attribute on each
input. Just as before: when grouping inputs, wrap each input in a container with the
field-row class to ensure a consistent spacing between inputs.
Option buttons can also be checked and disabled with their corresponding
HTML attributes.
GroupBox
A group box can be used by wrapping your elements with the fieldset tag.
It contains a sunken outer border and a raised inner border, resembling an engraved box
around your controls.
You can provide your group with a label by placing a legend element
within the fieldset.
TextBox
Text boxes can rendered by specifying a text type on an
input element. As with checkboxes and radio buttons, you
should provide a corresponding label with a properly set for
attribute, and wrap both in a container with the field-row class.
Additionally, you can make use of the field-row-stacked class
to position your label above the input instead of beside it.
To support multiple lines in the user's input, use the textarea
element instead.
Text boxes can also be disabled and have value with their corresponding HTML attributes.
Slider
Sliders can rendered by specifying a range type on an
input element.
You can make use of the has-box-indicator class replace the
default indicator with a box indicator, furthermore the slider can be wrapped
with a div using is-vertical to display the input vertically.
Note: To change the length of a vertical slider, the input width
and div height.
Dropdown
Dropdowns can be rendered by using the select and option
elements.
By default, the first option will be selected. You can change this by
giving one of your option elements the selected
attribute.
Window
The following components illustrate how to build complete windows using
98.css.
Title Bar
You can build a complete title bar by making use of three classes,
title-bar, title-bar-text, and title-bar-controls.
We make use of aria-label to render the Close button, to let
assistive technologies know the intent of this button. You may also use
"Minimize", "Maximize", "Restore" and "Help" like so:
Each aria-label also has a corresponding styling class to render the title bar buttons,
to let the aria-label text be in other languages without causing rendering, accessibility, or localization issues.
Maximize buttons can be disabled, useful when making a window appear as if it cannot be maximized.
You can make a title bar "inactive" by adding inactive class,
useful when making more than one window.
Window contents
To give our title bar a home, we make use of the window
class. This provides a raised outer and inner border, as well as some
padding. We can freely resize the window by specifying a width in the
container style.
To draw the contents of the window, we use the window-body
class under the title bar.
There's so much room for activities!
Status Bar
You can render a status bar with the status-bar class,
and status-bar-field for every child text element.
There are just so many possibilities:
A Task Manager
A Notepad
Or even a File Explorer!
Press F1 for help
Slide 1
CPU Usage: 14%
TreeView
To render a tree view, use an ul element with the
tree-view class. The children of this list (li
elements), can contain whatever you'd like.
We can put
✨ Whatever ✨
We want in here
To make this a tree, we can nest further ul elements
(no class needed on these). This will provide them with a nice dotted
border and indentation to illustrate the structure of the tree.
To create expandable sections, wrap child lists inside of
details elements.
Table of Contents
What is web development?
CSS
Selectors
Specificity
Properties
Selectors
Specificity
Properties
JavaScript
Avoid at all costs
Unless
Avoid
At
Avoid
At
All
Cost
All
Cost
Avoid at all costs
Unless
Avoid
At
Avoid
At
All
Cost
All
Cost
Avoid
At
Avoid
At
All
Cost
Avoid
At
All
Cost
All
Cost
HTML
Special Thanks
Tabs
To render a tab list, use a menu element with the
[role=tablist] attribute. The children of this menu (li
elements), should get a [role=tab] attribute.
Tabs should be managed by adding custom javascript code.
All you need is to add the [aria-selected=true] attribute to the active tab.
Hello, world!
Desktop
My computer
Control panel
Devices manager
Hardware profiles
Performance
the tab content
To create multirows tabs, add a multirows
class to the menu tag.
Hello, world!
Desktop
My computer
Control panel
Devices manager
Hardware profiles
Performance
Users
Network
Programs
Services
Resources
Advanced
the tab content
TableView
To render a table view, use a table element. Wrap it with a div element with sunken-panel class to provide proper border and overflow container.
With a bit of extra scripting you can make table view interactive. Give interactive class to
table element to show pointer cursor when hovering over body rows. Table rows can be given
highlighted class to appear selected.
Progress Indicator
There are two types of progress bars: solid and segmented. The solid version is the default. To declare a segmented bar, you should use the segmented class.
Field borders
Issues, Contributing, etc.
98.css is MIT licensed.
Refer to the GitHub issues page to see bugs
in my CSS or report new ones. I'd really like to see your pull requests (especially those new to
open-source!) and will happily provide code review. 98.css is a fun, silly project and I'd like
to make it a fun place to build your open-source muscle.
Thank you for checking my little project out, I hope it brought you some joy today. Consider
starring/following along on GitHub and maybe
subscribing to more fun things on my twitter. 👋