I Miss Themes

I WANT TO CUSTOMIZE I WANT TO THEME I WANT TO SKIN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I miss themes and skins and things so much, when I saw that nickelodeon theme with the slime man oh my god.
*apologies for such a long time since the last video also, thank you for your patience
My things - - X3
X or twitter or whatever it is now: / bjiru_
Steam: steamcommunity.com/id/bjiru/
Discord house: / discord
Costco shirt: bjiru.com/cosco_shirt.png
Songs used:
The New Tetris (N64 OST) - Haluci Theme Music: • The New Tetris (N64 OS...
The New Tetris (N64 OST) - Africa Theme Music: • The New Tetris (N64 OS...
Team Buddies - Chilling Fields (World 5): • Team Buddies - Chillin...
Team Buddies - World Select: • Team Buddies - World S...
Team Buddies - Main Menu: • Team Buddies - Main Menu
Chapters :3c
00:00 Windows 7 Theme's
02:17 Windows Xp Theme's
03:51 Program's used to allow Theme's
06:07 The Death of Customization
09:08 Things you CAN still Customize
09:46 Why.
11:48 Goodnight :3
ヽ(;^o^ヽ)

[@bjiru_]

The Linux users have arrived

[@AwesomeYena]

I wish I had Linux

[@kleptomaticagain]

[@kleptomaticagain]

@@AwesomeYenait doesn't take too much to get started :D I'd suggest trying a mainstream distro, maybe like Linux Mint -- it's a lot like Windows. There's also a lot of guides for it online too!

[@AwesomeYena]

@@kleptomaticagain My dad won't let me, its not that I don't know how.

[@kleptomaticagain]

@@AwesomeYenaoh that's unfortunate :/

[@Damiaen.]

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

[@aphaits]

It's so ugly! I love it!

[@tabsc3489]

this!

[@beardsntools]

You still can have themes if you want, you just have to get unofficial.. which I always had anyway since xp. On 7 I used to have a nice 3rd party nice flat aero theme. I don't even consider the ability to change win 7 aero color a theme. You are just changing the color of an ugly dated 3d theme.. it's still same.

[@gymonstarfunkle136]

MySpace in a nutshell

[@MaxRamos8]

No but I used the custom theme packs on the chrome web store, now those were FIRE 🔥 🔥 I had one with a flaming skellington rocking a guitar! And the home pages could change pictures

[@nvyefex]

minimalism kills creativity

[@spungboy]

yep

[@yoshisreal]

hell, even minimalist approaches to stuff back then (prior to the mid-2010s) were better than the ones today

[@vishwarao6064]

anime pfp

[@ChaoscelusApollyon]

​@@vishwarao6064letter

[@LeonBlade]

You can be creative in your own way though. KZbin may not let you make an ugly ass profile, but your videos can exist anyway you want.

[@demaraeaudio8934]

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

[@sireggnog890]

Blame minimalism/brutal styles fault.

[@Galidorquest]

It all began as a retro hipster counter-culture and then it started to become mainstream by 2012 after Windows 8 was released. Even older iPhones had more creative design on the home-screen.

[@pawemarkowski2768]

Ornamental architecture recently seems to be fighting back though

[@yeoldefoxeh254]

@@pawemarkowski2768 I wish. What I see is "intentionally visible concrete" and such.....

[@rytisliaucys3444]

so essentially western world has downgraded to the soviet style architecture

[@k-c]

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.

[@bjiru_]

I find it so fulfilling that people who are older feel the same way, a lot of this is a lot of the time chalked up to "nostalgia" or "missing of childhood" when people my age bring it up, witch, it defiantly is a little of. but its so nice when I hear people of other ages saying it too, it proves its more then just that. thanks for the sharing your story, and thanks for all the thing you made back in the day, no matter how big or small

[@pintavodki]

@@bjiru_ Yeah, it is nice to see that it is not just you. I'm 35 now and I often think whether technology was really more exciting 10-15 years ago or whether I've just lost that excitement in me with age. Every Apple keynote used to be an event to watch, and things like Google Glass were like little visions of a future filled with promise. Maybe a bit of both, but phones have definitely gotten a lot more boring since 2000s, just as you say in your other video. Same with customisation and skins.

[@EHKvlogs]

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.

[@darksidegryphon5393]

Nr 2 looks like mobile centric design; Nr 3 appears to be the logical extreme of "Keep It Stupid Simple".

[@turbo_marc]

Rounded corners make memes harder to screenshot. They are visually appealing though so I'll give them that.

[@muharremsuz]

I absolutely hate rounded corners

[@user-iw4gv1br8h]

Same, they must be afraid babies will get hurt with em corners

[@turbo_marc]

@@user-iw4gv1br8h You seem to be hurt by rounded corners.

[@DominatorLegend]

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

[@gameratortylerstein5636]

Yiu will iet tze baks

[@GraniteStateVictoria]

KZbin held out until 2013, the site really began to go downhill when they switched to the One Channel design, or as I call it, the Boring Milk Carton design

[@sideshowkazstuff3867]

It happened to everything. Customised ring tones became a thing of the past. It got bad for partially sighted people because everyone expects the default only and goes nuts using someone else’s computer when the theme is set for someone that can’t see well. For a long wile it became fashionable to not have fun with themes. Social media stopped allowing customisation and everyone just sort of stopped. Part of it is that when people used code to change the look of profiles they could remove adds from being viewed and people that make text the same colour as the background and ruin their profiles. I personally agree I loved customisation.

[@PalaceMidasTV]

and heres why thats a good thing

[@PalaceMidasTV]

@@photonigarcia you'll never have the chance to own your own house, and YOULL BE HAPPY. The EU legislated for insects to be added to products last year, so long as they have a little label on them. Can't wait

[@smthnew861]

Customisation is how i got into graphic design. There was this diary type of website. And i had spent so much time doing it, I've learned how to use photoshop, how to draw, how to make animations, how to record and make music as a theme for my diary. Man. It was so fun

[@geeshta]

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

[@Jomester]

They took our skins...

[@hyojung208]

my skin!!!!

[@Gaminginvrrr]

AHHHH GET OUT OF MY SKIN

[@IntegerOfDoom]

ChaNinja!

[@RaTcHeT302]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CANT MAKE MY PC LOOK LIKE KUNG FU PANDA ANYMORE

[@harrysmbdgs]

TRRRKRRRSKRRRRRRR 😂

[@Aeduo]

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.

[@bjiru_]

Man very good way of putting it

[@RyebuckCoppercap]

Yeah! Minimalism doesn't have to be an endless sea of gray always! Sites could just as easily have minimalistic, but colourful designs, but companies just want boring and uniform >~

[@RedBlueProductions1]

and even when it is, it's in the _exact_ way they would put it in corporate buildings, as a cynical "morale booster" to make a number go up instead of actually making something worth appreciating

[@Aeduo]

@@RedBlueProductions1 well stated, definitely.

[@ThePC007]

It's not even utalitarian at all. In fact, I find minimalist design much less readable than skeuomorphism. It frequently gets in the way in ways that skeuonorphic design just doesn't.

[@ToyplayJustToyplay]

I'm a middle school teacher in the netherlands. I've been noticing that my students (age 12-17) have been personalising their computers with backgrounds, but mostly with their mouse cursors. Something that will always be visible, and will be unique to them.

[@bjiru_]

aww that is actually so amazing to hear, I didnt mention it hear but I also loved to do that as a kid, thats so cool its still a thing that warms my heart, thank you for telling me

[@enor69420]

nostalgia hits different when you are in your 20s

[@LEAFAN5000]

New windows is like a room with no furniture

[@azumi182]

based

[@LEAFAN5000]

@@azumi182 firmly

[@kerosenedrinker5778]

A room with no furniture but full of security cameras

[@aaz1992]

Which is why I modded W11 to look indistinguishable from XP 😂

[@mort_brain]

Close widows, open doors!

[@TriegaDN]

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.

[@arnehurnik]

It's not that difficult either. whole page backgrounds that could you could scroll through. A different text and background colour. Don't like how this profile looks? Need the high contrast version? Click this button to show the default theme for it and set a cookie.

[@Galidorquest]

I'm 28 and I didn't even know these Windows XP features until just now... 😫 My parents didn't know much either since I was raised by Baby Boomers.

[@bryanna_renaee]

GIMP omg what a throwback!!!

[@IsopropylDisinfectant]

I had a youtube channel in 2008-9 too and it was like a social media page with my own backgrounds and themes and all that. I was so upset it died when the 2010s rolled in. I loved it so much. Yes, even youtube had "themes" in a broader sense.

[@marveler8994]

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

[@kreuner11]

By all means windows 2000 was minimalist though

[@marveler8994]

@@kreuner11 minimalist as in blank squares and stuff like that but yeah I get what you mean

[@vogonp4287]

​​@@kreuner11It still had more character to it. It felt more professional, and not toy like.

[@Aeduo]

@@kreuner11 You could make anything any color and font you wanted though, and there were third party themeing tools that could replace how window borders and widgets were drawn.

[@user-wj6jh1cd5n]

​@@vogonp4287 I think this oversimplification comes from the opposite viewpoint. Culturally, things with lots of color and little additions to mess around with are seen as childish. People think that they need something extremely bland and devoid of character in order to seem professional because of the previous viewpoint.

[@Druagr]

It crazy how we've devolved to white text on black background, basically back to DOS.

[@robert357900]

Well you could change colours in DOS. So DOS is more customizable than any modern website. In Command Prompt there are more options and its even easier.

[@nikostalk5730]

"Windows is a bulky, and more likely - useless extension for DOS, made by Microsoft", Radio and Communications (1989)

[@JBBrickman]

You mean black text on white right?

[@nikostalk5730]

​@@JBBrickman he is right. White\Green text on black background were the basic DOS thing. The "dark" themes does the same way, lol, both to android and ios.

[@JBBrickman]

@@nikostalk5730 I was just saying that every website uses black text on a white background, I rarely see white text outside of discord.

[@zombiesalmon4997]

I want to live in a windows 7 wallpaper so bad. Humanity yearns to customise. Another brilliant video and I’m a bit ashamed to say I haven’t caught up since your ‘virtual worlds’ video. Fashionably late but im glad im subbed 💙

[@rexaorm]

Sadly, I never experienced this era of internet but my dad did explain lot of things how today's internet is boring, stale, and nothing like 1990's. It really saddens me and I truly wished that kind of freedom would come back, the freedom to do anything, customize, and whoever else, and it should be more fun, but now KZbin sucks. All social medias sucks. Designed to be addicting, not for you, but for company's money. I was mad when Steam removed theme feature, too because I was going to customize it soon but now I can't :(, I am actually glad you made this video, it really opened my mind up and made me realized even more further, to be honest. You deserve far more than 300K views on this video man

[@exzardoz3532]

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

[@florentin2735]

That's why i use BetterDiscord themes, some themes are even better than discord's official themes, tho if u want to use it, be aware that people get banned for using it, from what i had heard, i still didn't and used it for almost a year now

[@Her_Imperious_Condescension]

People still think I'm crazy for missing Skype, but back before Discord, Skype let you customise _everything._ The most discord lets you do is choose between 'cozy' and 'compact', in either white or grey. Except now you can pay to decorate your profile. ...Yay?

[@Memecube]

@@Her_Imperious_Condescension There's themes now but like always you also need to pay up in order to use them, otherwise you just have dark and light

[@aarOuOn]

Steam too

[@batwithahat312]

Betterdiscord is always a thing

[@babydactyl]

i always used to love these themes. the first time i turned on my first laptop and got that windows 7 jingle, i remember opening internet explorer and seeing in search results that osama bin laden was killed. i can't unseperate those two memories anymore. it's been a curse ever since. good times.

[@htoaletaarxidatet]

he definetly was

[@ngotorr]

indeed he was

[@galya8296]

Dang

[@whoisanarnb]

Do you remember your reaction

[@troev]

lol

[@workthatsuckertodeath]

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 :[

[@laterlars]

well technically yes but Tumblr kinda butchered that feature by making people's blog themes harder to actually view compared to how they used to.

[@mavohq]

and the best part is you don’t need to pay for it! really hoping they keep it as a free feature (despite them making custom html/css increasingly harder to access sadly)

[@OctavioGaitan]

For me, it was Windows 98 where I discovered my custom theme creativity. I once ran a small team of custom theme fans that made custom themes for old versions of Windows, but we stopped in 2018 because interests have changed, and we all had lives. I'm like you, I miss themes so much.

[@renakunisaki]

Customization lets you make something truly your own. That's not compatible with Big Tech's vision of you owning nothing.

[@lmost]

This comment is the ultimate truth.

[@sovograf]

Sad but apparently true

[@polzanera_from_the_shadows]

Klaus Schwab, is that you??!!?!

[@ErimlRGG]

No idea why you think that's the connection. I think it has more to do with company wanting their products to be easily recognizable to attract users

[@pptemplar5840]

​@@ErimlRGGYeah, we all know Windows XP had a notoriously hard time attracting users. This argument sort of makes sense for social media but not for operating systems, in the vast majority of cases only you have to interact with your operating system, yet we have still consistently slid backwards to the point that I can't even have a vertical task bar. It's like they took the fun away and then took the practical customization they left behind and chopped THAT in half.

[@BinglesP]

Shoutouts to Nintendo 3DS homebrew keeping the spirit of relevant custom themes alive

[@user-md7er6xe2z]

Yeah custom themes on 3DS are awesome.

[@guidedexplosiveprojectileg9943]

I made a Starcontrol 2 starbase theme.

[@animeloveer97]

hell yea and ieas easy af to do with a program for windows

[@subarulenz1470]

@@guidedexplosiveprojectileg9943 I made an eevee theme but don't know how to share

[@guidedexplosiveprojectileg9943]

@@subarulenz1470 Make an account on the 3ds theme website? I do not know.

[@constvoidptr]

5:08 You just triggered intense nostalgia for me with that one. I had always used that Da Vinci skin back in the days on my first own laptop, thought it was pretty dope. I had pretty much forgotten about it until this video.

[@oliviahawkins5092]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MENTIONING NEOCITIES!! i have a website on there and it's a lot of fun :D i think everyone should try their hand at making one if they have an interest in old web design, it's a great time and there's a friendly community around it :]

[@kennyslg8914]

I love that more and more people are realizing how much less creative the world has gotten over the past decade. My prediction for the mid 2020s is that we will finally make things more customizable, and design will become more creative again, especially considering how much demand there is for it. Your KZbin channel reminds me of the first one i made in 2007 at the age of 10. I used the Wayback Machine to visit websites in the 2000s again, and it brought back so many memories of when the Internet was more alive.

[@darksidegryphon5393]

"[...]especially considering how much demand there is for it" Tech execs: Nuh-uh!

[@NOSTahlgia]

Neumorphism is the design trend that’s taking over for the next decade, so still much of this soulless flat and boring designs

[@Neonrena]

The internet will look more creative but it won’t feel that way. It’s currently a shitshow.

[@Luke-zj6ge]

Lmao. It’s not going back to creativity. Creativity is dying in a lot of ways. I think we should just accept our basic shapes with blank spaces 🤣

[@luminariamuscaria]

@@Luke-zj6ge delusional.

[@lambito666]

I finally found someone who appreciates the lost culture of super customizing things. As I loved doing it in every program I used. Those times are missed, but I end up making up for it by customizing my visual studio code more and more.

[@sp123]

I miss customized pages on Myspace

[@Yep6803]

in part, there's no limit to create your own web age tbh

[@treypenton8490]

I don't wanna be that guy. Please. Don't. Drag. Me. But. i UsE aRcH and it's super customizable. That's the ONLY reason I run it 😂

[@miatuzzolino]

I love your channel, I'm from Argentina and it's so beautiful found someone that's has the same nostalgic for the internet when we were kids. great job you should do a video talking about the flash games from the 2000s :)

[@ryuno2097]

I played a lot with the themes on Win95. I remember there was a sahara/lion theme and I loved listening to the shutdown sound, Miss that theme a lot. edit: The theme was called Dangerous Creatures

[@shisketbread]

tumblr still allows you to completely rewrite the direct html code of your blog page, so you can even make your blog page just not a blog if you want but overtime its become less of an advertised feature and harder to access, and now it doesnt even show up when you go to a blog unless you go to a specific blog link which you basically cant access via the normal site and it doesnt help that nobody uses it anymore because its not visible on mobile at all and its barely accessible anymore, and not to mention how html has kind of become a lost art for the average person nowadays

[@user-wj6jh1cd5n]

Ironic when you think about it considering html became capable of doing things you would ordinarily require flash for, and I'm most people remember how big flash was.

[@ploploplop2349]

was going to say that, I love having a theme for my page and having silly little buttons and an mp3 player but it stops being fun if barely anyone including myself is going to see it

[@monstrousmoss]

spacehey has html customizable layouts as one of the main features, and it works on the new mobile app too! sometimes people make their pages total seizure machines, but for the most part they're really cool

[@-Julien-]

Same, I thought about my Tumblr blog. I'm not that good at doing big customizations, so mine is just my fave shades of blue and a drawing of myself. It's sad that Tumblr is dead.

[@shisketbread]

@@-Julien- tumblr is very alive and well idk what youre talking abt

[@Charredasperity]

Being in my 30s (basically a fossil by internet standards) I remember the early days on the internet and back then literally everything was customizable if you knew a little bit of code, it felt like everyone owned their own little piece of the internet, and I remember when I first started making music MySpace was popular, and being able to essentially turn into into a band website with all the features you'd want (a music player, a place to put flyers, embedding music videos, etc) made every artist stick out from each other. Now everything is uniform and corporate and there's no real way to catch anyone's eyes and ears and it feels like the internet owns you rather than you owning part of it.

[@GraniteStateVictoria]

I'm slightly younger than you (I'm 27, born in 1996) but also an ancient fossil by internet standards. I remember the things you're talking about. Remember those homemade websites? They were all hosted by Geocities, Tripod, or Angelfire. None of them were very good but we liked them anyway, they had a personal charm to them unlike the soulless social media borg that's absorbed everything today.

[@ninab.4540]

You're both not fossils, just vintage 😂

[@bjiru_]

"feels like the internet owns you rather than you owning part of it.", man that a good quote, thanks for sharing *also, as much as these internet 10 year olds may make you feel like it, your not old

[@ryuno2097]

@@GraniteStateVictoria you were born in 96? Damn you're a millennial just like me (only I was born in 85 lol) if you were born in 97 you'd be a gen z. Funny how you're considered a "boomer" by gen z standards.

[@GraniteStateVictoria]

@@ryuno2097 One kid did call me a boomer once after I showed him my Game Boy Color and I was like "Sheesh kid, I'm not THAT old! It's a Game Boy Color, not Pong" Funny thing is you're the exact same birth year as my boyfriend (I know, it's a big age gap, but we had an instant connection when we met last year).

[@FaBianrecord]

Ah yes, the customization of the GUI... was a thing back in the day, and make something that looks like "no standard" was very appealing. Now they did it, make something boring and "focus" on the task... and made hard to tweak (or even deep tweaking like modify some binaries from the system 32 folder), now all looks soulless and dead, yes we're living in the scrolling times where the users don't care (or almost) anymore about that. Just an little insight. Subscribed, you're funny :)

[@lowrangemaniac5326]

5:23 maaaaaaan! The feels! I miss those days.... I remember so freaking well this theme for Windows Media Player😢😢😢

[@nathawayhoa1971]

The reason these companies have been getting rid of customization is to further cement the fact that you don’t own the product you paid for.

[@AlexiosTheSixth]

this sort of thing is exactly why I switched to linux

[@da_pawz]

yes, we are now only renting no longer owning :(

[@damonhinson4005]

"You will own nothing and you will be happy"

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

They really hammer it home by occasionally resetting everything to default with "feature updates".

[@nikostalk5730]

@@dycedargselderbrother5353 if you stupid enough to trust a company's every single word, and never read their EULA - i have baaaaaaaaaaad news about it for ya

[@jooch_exe]

Then: "Make the computer personal again" Now: "Make the subscription personal again"

[@MrEdrftgyuji]

Microsoft renamed the "My Computer" icon to "This PC" in Windows 10. You will own nothing and be happy.

[@snickerdoooodle]

@@MrEdrftgyuji Psst, you can rename it back and create a local account.

[@frtzkng]

@@MrEdrftgyuji IIRC this is just a default name. You can also name it "dingus" or whatever

[@Thespikedballofdoom]

I come to you today as a man who has themed his 10 (SecureUxTheme), his Steam client, (even after support was violently torn out), his media player, his Blender, his TF2 hud (manual mostly), his youtube (Redux), uses tons of other website themes via the Stylus CSS-modifying browser extension, on a themed version of a custom fork of firefox called waterfox all because firefox wouldn't let me install unsigned addons. So much for "Our goal is your satisfaction"...

[@benmcreynolds8581]

Seeing how things are now, I'm so grateful I was born in '89. It was such a great time to be a kid. The world seemed to have so many creative outlets & forms of expression. Ways that kids, teens and adults could enjoy themselves. Places to go, things to do, unique style and design. I really miss the Vibe of that Era where it treated us all like it respected our intelligence, time & experience. While also providing aspects with in our society that help keep our inner kid in us alive. It felt like everything acknowledged how important YOU were as a citizen, customer, fan, person because without us they would be nothing. The creativity that came from that era really put effort into it's ingenuity, not this bland minimalism we see today. I really hope we find a way to reconnect with it because the world really needs it right now. Look how soulless so much has become nowadays? Look at the horrible aesthetics, poor quality & creative design in modern cities, or even in shows, movies, & video games. Things have become so bland, bleek, and minimalistic to the point that it doesn't even make since. Most Old house's/building's/uúnique shop's are gone. Interesting oddities like drive in movies, indoor fun zones, arcade's, magazines that came with a demo disc to try out game's, blockbuster/Hollywood video, McDonald's had N64's & crazy fun zones & art designs all over, you could preview music before buying it, they had great kid's toy's, Roller Rink's, Garbage pale kid's card's. You get the point. Bring back Retro-Futurism or Y2K Vibes. ANYTHING compared to this current Dystopian toxic positivity. Our society feels more lost then it ever has. Society is solely focused on out of control capitalistic agendas. That anything that isn't constantly increasing profits is a failure and has no value to society? Our Quality of Life should be better than this. Basic living shouldn't be this unaffordable. People should be able to have fun, dork around, have things that engage them. The list goes on. Bring me back to the 90's.

[@catto-from-heaven]

I was born in 2004 and I still agree with you. I miss those good old days

[@kyomakus]

kyomaku here, thank you so much for featuring my little website!!! ;__; never thought id make it into a youtube video... no less for my silly little corner of the web >:P

[@bjiru_]

AAAA! HELLO! AMAZING WEBSITE!! ITS SO COOL AMAZING JOB, I CANNOT BELIEVE YOUR HERE ! ITS NOT JUST A LITTLE WEBSITE ITS A BIG AND COOL WEBSITE !! AND I CAN ONLY IMAGINE THE TIME IT TOOK TO MAKE, THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT !! :3

[@maje2610]

i just found your website and holy fuck it looks amazing!! the colours, the icons, the windows 9x look... its got a shit ton of personality and i love it!

[@kyomakus]

@@maje2610 eee thank you so so much!!! ^_^

[@SirusStarTV]

9:34

[@zvezdalina29]

I think that's exactly why I see a lot of artist embracing this "old internet style" and I love it

[@nikostalk5730]

most artist brings back memories about Windows 2000-Windows XP things, 7 - is more likely to be a fresh thing, but, because it was a very reliable and good OS. Like an old fashioned Renault car. Simple, durable, fun as hell, easy to drive, easy to make it look like a 9yrs old sportcar You own it, not a copro owned you.

[@aidaeggo5794]

*embracing And I agree :)

[@_samograj]

Love your enthusiasm, keep it up! Never I'd guess that video about themes will be so entertaining 🙈

[@extrapathos]

As a devout minimalist and aspiring graphic designer with OCD, flat design websites irritate me more than anything. Let me illustrate. Not enough padding here, too much padding there, too many drop down menus, BLOATING, inconsistency with graphic updates because small covert directories are ignored (good, keep it that way), not enough color, not enough variety, what deserves rounded corners and what doesn't, these small insignificant visual details I just can't ignore because they're THE ONLY THINGS ON THE FUCKING SCREEEEEEEN Before flat design was the only design, I could disregard _perfection_ because there was more decoration on the screen to keep my eyeballs occupied. When things were "dirty" they were dirty enough that I didn't think about fixing them. Raster graphics are pieces of art. They don't need to be edited, they don't need to be warped and fondled, they are as they are. That's okay, and they are beautiful the way they are. When _perfection_ is tried, _perfection_ becomes the status quo. _Perfection_ must be maintained. _Perfection_ is highbrow. If you don't do things _perfectly_ you are a subpar piece of human filth. Getting hired is out of the question. It weaves perfectionism into everyone's mind, it's subliminal. Corporate web designers are puppets who had their souls crushed long ago. I wish on a shooting star that Big Tech would hire people who aren't afraid to get decorative and raster dirty, but imperfection is not profitable nor dependable. Remember, Big Tech used to be some nerd fumbling in his garage. It's just business.

[@PolygonDonut]

THATS WHAT IM SAYING!!!!!!! THIS 100 TIMES!!!!!!!!!! Genuinely my biggest issue with all of technology is simply customizability. My iphone cant have moving backgrounds. I cant change the colors of my windows, cant even make it glossy like it used to be either. My switch is either Light mode or Dark mode. My youtube channel has a banner and a pfp and nothing else. It actually sucks and is so devoid of whimsy or excitment. I really hope we can go back to normalizing more customization. Discord has been adding more profile customization, but at the cost of a MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION, and even paying individually for pfp borders. Steam has a good wealth of options too for your profile, but still at the cost of points from purchasing games. Great video btw, I actually really love this channel, the way you talk about things feels so free-form and naturally funny 😁👍

[@bjiru_]

I hope so too.. there’s just no, or very little fun these days in the internet Thank you so much also :3

[@PolygonDonut]

@@bjiru_ After watching this I did start doing some research on the program Openshell and I already set it up so my windows 10 taskbar looks like windows XP, its so cool

[@Munnie49]

Hiii Polygon Donut!!I rlly love your videos and i agree with u and bjiru too!ヽ(>∀

[@DrEqualizer666]

Cool to see you here

[@luimu]

Switch to android, switch to Linux, mod your switch, install css theming extension to your browser and make whatever theme for any website you want. Discord is fully themable with mods, client and web version. It's not that nothing has themes nowadays but you are not looking for them hard enough.

[@TheMelonFarmers123]

I’m a little older than you but I remember being legitimately shocked that you couldn’t change or edit a Facebook page like you could on MySpace and KZbin. I still remember hanging onto MySpace because fb and Twitter just seemed so…plain…. Honestly the whole internet now seems so plain and corporate. Shout out to the people who had the halo theme for windows media player. That shit popped.

[@CrimsonMey]

My part of the world used friendster. There came a point when I only logged in just to change the layout css, the music and the cursor. Or enbed another video.

[@beardsntools]

lol myspace pages were obnoxious af, but facebook is for boomers anyway. milenials use insta and gen z uses ticktocks and snapchat.

[@NOSTahlgia]

@@beardsntools Obnoxious? Not really. They were fun, millennials use facebook, instagram, snapchat and ticktock lol I'm not sure you have your finger on the pulse of culture as much as you think you do

[@beardsntools]

@@NOSTahlgia Lmao these pages were obnoxious af.. that's the main reason why myspace failed. As social media sites, there was no noticeable difference in features, facebook literally had less and that was not having website like personalization, but ironically everyone wanted that, that's why everyone switched to it. And nah they don't, some do, but majority don't.. millennials don't use facebook anymore lmao. snapchat and ticktock are apps made for gen z, where short attention span, depression, anxiety and false sense of security are their main properties

[@beardsntools]

@@NOSTahlgia lmao these website like personalization were obnoxious, facebook literally came and offered the lack of it and that was enough to get everyone two switch. And no millennials do not use facebook anymore it's a boomer website- Ticktock and snapchat are apps made for short attention span and false sense of security, so gen z

[@computerpow5573]

When the startup sound from the Landscapes theme played . I got a deep flashback from my old laptop . It's like wherever I ever go , at anytime in the future , when I hear this it immediately sounds like home to me ...

[@weepy9622]

I feel this video so much. You seem deeply involved in the thoughts you are spitting out. And I absolutely respect it.

[@vladimirkovalenko7298]

I think the problem with modern trends is not about design preferences or lack of taste, but about density. It's not hard to make these fancy pages responsive. And, for example, our b2b company allows us to make as many little animations and ui goodies as we want. But noone has time for that, cause development schedules are so god damn tight. The internet is no longer a playground. It's a market now.

[@am_pm.17]

So long as I'm alive I will never accept that. The web is a playground for me, whether corporations like it or not. We shouldn't just bow down to their ways but keep hold of our creativity, fun and good taste!

[@NerdOnTheStreet]

Yeah, just maintaining two different theme options for users of my own website has been a lot of work. Coding the ability for users to customize every little thing about their profiles or how they see other pages just isn't practical. And while I'm an individual working on my own website, huge companies aren't necessarily going to be incentivized to put their productivity towards that kind of thing either, especially when the benefits aren't easily quantifiable.

[@tailsprowerfan2729]

Oversimplified should be outlawed we need to go back to having more freedom

[@zenethra3391]

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 KZbin 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.

[@TheSpaceOctopus]

i know it's easy in 7 and 10, you just have to patch a file

[@Marshimello]

Tumblr still allows u to customize your blog! And its fun as hell

[@logis8235]

have you found any ways to customize things?

[@01Gshadow]

You can have customization if these big tech executives somehow figure out that they can sell skins to their users.

[@logis8235]

@@01Gshadow mmm nah. The ability to express shouldn't be behind a paywall

[@elixexo4011]

As someone who's learning to design webpages, I have to say creating both mobile and desktop versions isn't that complicated, you can just have dynamic zoom and resizing and the page will look and function as intended.

[@Lotus77777]

We used to modify our MySpace pages and other sites to remove the ad banners/columns. That is probably part of why modern social media demands uniformity.

[@herodoesstuff]

god i forgot phones truly are probably the reason we dont get fun themes anymore. i know tumblr let u customize and just show the default theme on mobile, but it seems theyre trying rly hard to phase that out lol (tho blogs can still have custom themes if u go out of ur way to view them properly). but i feel like we could have this for other sites too!!

[@poisoncrab]

correction: iphones, not phones, as android is as customizable as it can be, samsung looks different to google pixel, yet all ios'es are the same, yet android is ultra customizable.

[@PosterityIslesNews]

​@@poisoncrabi think they meant that its harder to format themes to be viewable on phones

[@satibel]

> who is it for? I used that theme, it was for me.

[@Easy_Revenge__]

@@poisoncrabno, it has to do with browsers and apps, not the phones themselves.

[@hmm279]

kid named kde plasma:

[@zephyfoxy]

Hey that's what I'm running ;3

[@ilamparithi.]

The new plasma 6 ocean sounds are awesome

[@benjamineastwood5616]

@@ilamparithi.but mah plasma 5 themes 😢

[@TimthePhilosiraptorExhale]

I have it... it isnt enough.

[@hyperpii18]

i literally have mine set up in the most default way possible 🔥🔥🤫

[@bratzrule2009]

Anyone else remember the Windows 3.1 themes? Just the most lurid colour-vomit and I loved them! Hotdog Stand was bright red and yellow, but my personal fave was Fluorescent - hot pink and neon green!

[@Mankey619]

Windows 7 and XP were one of my favorites in Microsoft's softwares ever. Watching them really brings back so much memories as a kid. Even I constantly have so much fun customizing themes on my computer.

[@DavidPereiraLima123]

It's so nice to see Gen. Z appreciating the late 00's/early 10's design. There's hope for the world yet.

[@bjiru_]

on the other end, its really cool to see people who's childhood wasn't during that period, a lot of people are quick to dismiss these things as nostalgia, so its good to know its more then that

[@GraniteStateVictoria]

@@bjiru_ I'm borderline Millennial/Gen Z (born in 1996) and I agree, there's more to it than nostalgia, it was something special.

[@hehasnolips1371]

Nobody is appreciating these designs it’s a nostalgic aesthetic that is nice but its ugly and should stay gone

[@Aki-kh2qe-StreetKidZZZ]

​@@hehasnolips1371you're one of the few people who think that and people like you have personal issues that you need to fix first before giving an opinion about anything. So Fk off where you came

[@Aki-kh2qe-StreetKidZZZ]

​@@bjiru_there's huge revival and rise on frutiger aero and y2k aesthetics if you're interested. Welcome to the future that boomers promised us yet they lied to steal from us

[@secondary-smiles]

Unix ricing is still alive and well, it’s hard to beat that amount of customization

[@goluboch]

I hate how all unix ricing is just dwm with anime on background

[@aeoe9385]

​@@golubochnot all of it is, for example there's aerothemeplasma for KDE which attempts to recreate windows 7, and it does it pretty well at that; there's also chicago95 for xfce which also supports the color themes from Plus! and every other 9x release

[@aeoe9385]

i probably have to mention KDE itself, there's genuinely a mountain of customisation in there, couple that with the styles and plasmoids and you can make nearly anything you want to edit: my first comment somehow disappeared into nothing, so i'll mention aerothemeplasma and chicago95 here ig

[@birdybird712]

If someone would want some crazy themes and customization there’s still people developing and using the old E16 branch of the Enlightenment desktop for Linux. The themes and screenshots from back in the day has pretty much disappeared from the visible Internet, but it’s still possible to find some links and archived pages here and there. There was someone compiling it for their 64 bit RISC machine just recently. On the other hand, I just bought a new oled laptop so I’ll be using dark and boring themes on that to preserve my screen :-)

[@Aeduo]

@@goluboch Yeah, they embrace the minimalism, and waifus.

[@toomuchrgb]

The starting part of the video literally flowed nostalgia through me, my childhood was windows 7.

[@ImEazyE]

for youtube, it was so fun to have different backgrounds, banners and fonts. I still remember very well seeing these until like 2011, even though we alrealdy had the iphone app (with old TV 📺 icon) that had no customization. i miss those times where everybody had its own personal space on every website and on your computer. I literally spent hours watching the visualizations of the windows media player on win xp

[@WhoseverThread0]

The internet from the 2000s does have a special place in my heart. Very nostalgic and I agree it was so much more interesting. I think companies locked the designs for uniformity and so that their website is easily distinguishable from others.

[@residentalien818]

I began really using the internet after things started getting more uniform and less customizable. So when I learned about the youtube themes and other old social media I felt quite envious of what was taken from me lol

[@bjiru_]

Interesting to hear from someone who wasn’t there for it, that proves it’s not just nostalgia talking

[@AwesomeYena]

Same. [Started using teh net in the early 2010s]

[@oliverhatesolives]

Sameee man The happiness my artistic soul felt when I found out that spacehey existed and I could customise everything Now all I need is social skills to make the site fun to use outside of remaking my profile over and over 😭😭😭

[@residentalien818]

@@oliverhatesolives just friend anyone that has a cool pfp or likes the same stuff as you lol

[@Nerd2Ninja]

We can revive website themes with browser extensions and you can bring back OS themes by using a GNU + Linux distribution.

[@ifeelfantastic7660]

DUDE YES.. YES!!!! The feelings you had for Windows 7 were valid for Windows XP for me. I used to spend my time with XP and was always fascinated by designs that were too "colourful", too "detailed" for current designers. Simplified logos and themes are a HUGE nightmare for me. Lately, with the explosion of the "frutiger aero" trend, these issues are coming to the fore again and I CAN FINALLY TALK ABOUT IT. I don't know if you remember, but in the past, when I was searching for a file on my computer, a YELLOW DOG ANIMATION would appear and help me find what I was looking for. And while he was on standby he was making different little stupid movements, I remember him reading a book sometimes. I loved that damn puppy so much. Are you dealing with a word file? MWAHAHAH HERE'S A SMALL TALKING PAPERCLIP FOR YOU! I really miss the more customizable crazy designs and those little goofy animations I mentioned. Also the different sounds the computer makes. I look at my opinions on these issues from an outside perspective and I literally speak like a 70-year-old from the past. But there is nothing I can do, I guess I am among the group of people who are stuck in the past. Now that I am an old man who takes great pleasure in changing the size, color, shape and speed of the arrow on my screen, I will isolate myself from society and constantly play with the designs of that arrow.I can't stand this simplicity anymore.

[@bjiru_]

aaaaa, dont worry, I miss windows xp dog just as much.. He didnt work great at all XD, but he added so much more personality and.. just fun to the operating system. I think him and clippy perfectly demonstrate a level of fun thats been lost. Your not an old man, from the response this videos gotten there are clearly more like you, or at the very least, at least just 1 (((me))) ;p

[@ifeelfantastic7660]

@@bjiru_ hahahah Thank you for your nice response! Actually, I didn't even think you'd see this comment. I agree with you, they didn't work very well, but they were fun. Who knows, maybe one day we will see the collapse of these simplified designs and go back to the old days? Your response made my day, thanks again my man!

[@BiteBunnys]

Just found you channel I cant get enough I am binging all your videos🙏

[@valcaron]

It's literally one of the many notches in the temperature dial for the boiling frog. That boiling frog being the push to remove "Personal" from "Personal Computer"; Microsoft and Apple and Google would rather computers be appliances that you don't truly own.

[@vladprus4019]

You will own nothing. And you wwill be happy. Totaly not a corporate serfdom.

[@shrugsmemes917]

i still miss the freedom of self-expression to this day to the point where i'm insanely happy neocities exists

[@leondelight]

This is my new favorite KZbin channel fr, the way you speak makes me feel like I love my life again

[@RetrovexAmbient]

Great job on the vid mate, learned a lot from this!

[@mactep1]

One of the reasons why Firefox is still my favorite browser.

[@bsh38ehe47usjebdjw8]

yeah, firefox not only has lots of themes but also has full css support

[@mactep1]

@@bsh38ehe47usjebdjw8 not just themes, my favorite part is that you can customize the placement of every single icon in the menu bar.

[@halionextra]

I suggest you to try Vivaldi

[@blbezcc]

Why? What does vivaldi have that firefox doesn't? When you get into user.css customization, both can do that. ​@@halionextra

[@fishyc43sar]

​@@halionextrasame, I love Vivaldi AND Firefox

[@Roskaa]

yayy neocities mention. neocities webmasters rise up!!

[@DrEqualizer666]

I KNOW YOU OH MY GOD

[@DrEqualizer666]

YOU MADE THE ROBLOX LIMINAL SPACE GAME THAT I WOULD PLAY LIKE EVERY DAY TO SEE IF THERE WERE ANY NEW MAPS

[@Sickcrazyneet]

Hello :3

[@coolguyshockettes]

Hi!!! Im still learning :3

[@goobyeah]

YAHHH

[@RoshanRichard]

Came here for the thumbnail. Stayed here for the content. You left me with a nostalgic feeling

[@leafisactuallyaplantyk]

Dude I'm still sad about the second cellphone I owned dying because I miss the themes that came with it, it's been like 17 years :") I still have it, a Motorola something flip phone, no camera and it has that chunky antenna lol but it had a few themes that changed the menu's colors and the background image, I would change it every month and match it with the beaded phone chain/string thingy (no clue what they were called even in my native language). I miss that feeling that small customizations like that gave me. Even with ringback tones, idk if that's still a thing but I know I spent too much money to have different Katy Perry songs as my ringback tones... I guess I eventually just forgot about it. I didn't get to experience this Windows version cause we didn't have a PC back then, but damn I wish that whole concept was still around

[@zacharyharris2177]

I remember finding some random sketchy taskbar addon thing that lets you customize your mouse cursor on windows xp. I remember having this flaming cursor that left a little fire trail wherever it went.

[@arnoldswaggerson6938]

BURNING SUPER DEATH SWORD

[@NanoBotSigma]

I love how this is a really positive video focusing on the fun, rather than a negative one focusing on the lack of it

[@geobot9k]

If you're fortunate enough to have some free time and don't mind diving into tutorials to customize your machine then definitely give linux a chance. Debian linux is super stable and there's loads of beginner friendly distros and theming options. It was funny when he mentioned winamp because I have a program called QMMP running with the classic winamp theme playing in the background. You can customize practically everything, even add effects to how windows open and close with a gnome extension called Burn My Windows

[@sadasela]

I remember that back in 2010 Twitter allowed users to change the background of their profile, for example. Websites used to be a lot cooler and it was normal to be stuck in any given site or forum. Also, those were the days of Tumblr and blogs. The Internet was truly much more interesting and funny back in the day.

[@TheYoungKilljoy]

The Internet Archive is full of themes... They even have Inuyasha and Daria themes with icons for the PC :) love it. Also, love desktop buddies. Nonetheless, I'm way too scared to install those in my one and only PC

[@Vasileva85]

I’m almost 40 and back around 2002-2003 you were able to download official noise packs for AOL. I had mine set to Mr Moviefone, he would loudly proclaim “Your mail is Rated R”

[@CookieCraftMedia]

The old channel designs were so unique, I even had some photoshop templates to make a couple for some friends channels

[@bjiru_]

THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFULL, I WAS LOOKING FOR EXACTLY THAT FOR THIS VIDEO BUT I ENDED UP JUST INSPECT ELEMENTING SMOSHS CHANNEL LMAO

[@JK-xz1lt]

Yep. I do miss those days. I used to design Flash games and sites in the mid-2000s, and I'll always remember how much fun it was to make weird interactions. Creating pulsing colored cursors, and hidden animations. So much fun. Sadness. It's the main reason I switched to Android phones in 2014. I wanted to customize and jail-breaking my iPhone 4 at the time was getting harder to do. Winamp is still on my PC for the fun of it.

[@gregw01]

Those startup sounds at the beginning reminded me of a time where life was simple and little me was playing with dad's old bulky acer. Just those sounds alone Made me smile :)

[@disuko]

the derpy hooves crashing through the win7 logo gave me so much nostalgia holy shit

[@knucklesskinner253]

so the thing is, in music production there's so many synths that when booted up, look like some weird futuristic instrument, when it could just look like nothing

[@bjiru_]

Very true, a perfect example that you CAN make things fun and unique, most things just are lazy

[@chuckgoodwin87]

try reason

[@TheSpaceOctopus]

i love the designs for VST's

[@evcfy]

im 41 seconds in watching this as my first vid on ur channel and im already sympathizing so much with this. u have a cool personality and this is a great video.

[@TheLadysAtelier]

On principle I agree, I love customization, but also Windows 10 isn't really much different from 7 in terms of customizability, you can definitely change the taskbar and window border color, that's what I do. You can even tell it to automatically pick a color from your desktop background, which can be fun with rotating backgrounds and you can choose whether it affects the taskbar, window borders or both and can tell it to have some transparency (not as detailed as in 7 but it's not entirely absent) But also I want to emphasize that I definitely agree!! I miss customizability and I love finding apps and programs that let me make my devices feel like mine.

[@snickerdoooodle]

This. Idk why people are insisting you can't change the taskbar and window colors when you can. Heck, you can still fire up Windows Media Player and use skins from 20 years ago.

[@RichieAlton]

I miss those days a lot. Part of the reason I got into graphic design. You helped me remember my YT channel background image was digital tracings of my online graffiti battles from 2007. I remember thinking those backgrounds were the pinnacle of personalization LOL. Also customizing our Myspaces made us all feel like professional coders every time we would drop lines of code into the profile editor. Good times. Great video too.

[@therealhesam3624]

7:27 AND IT'S MINE hits hard man❤

[@XenoGonBee]

thank for telling about neocities man. this revived not only my want to customize but also one silly webpage i made back in 7th grade.

[@viviennenorthwoods]

shouts out to roku for keeping themes alive on streaming sticks. every other kind is just a black void plastered with ads

[@Anis-bo1kn]

I remember in Windows 10 being able to change the title bar and taskbar/start menu colours, there's a checkbox you need to activate under the colours selection menu at 1:30.

[@yaltschuler]

This is correct.

[@LilacMonarch]

Yeah for some reason they made having no color the default. It looks awful

[@cyril___]

yeah i wanted to say the same thing, there is 2 checkbox and ur good to go

[@snickerdoooodle]

DING DING DING! This is an option in Windows 10 and 11. It doesn't appear if you haven't paid for a Windows license because Windows being used for free disables personalization features.

[@monytontana5184]

Bro is giving me 80's Val Kilmer vibes... I like! I do miss having your own custom playlist for ur MySpace to reflect your mood at the time. Mine was always Breaking Benjamin or G-Unit 😂

[@Magenta_Nimbat]

OH yeah thank you for introducing to me spacehey and neocities! I got me something to do for the next month!

[@Shxnon]

Say what you want about Tumblr, but I think they are one of the few social media that allows you to customize your profile/blog. On mobile it only lets you choose background colors, fonts, etc. but on PC/Web browser you can use themes with html code and there are TONS of blog who make a compile themes for you to use

[@CeruleanChurch]

This was fantastic. Themes really had a hold on everyone in some way in the 2000s, especially on Windows Media Player. It was wild back then.

[@zacharyharris2177]

I never really used windows media player when I had windows xp. I wish I did though because those custom themes are amazing.

[@snickerdoooodle]

Hint: Those themes still work in Windows Media Player, which is still part of Windows 11 to this day. Just find the archived WMZ files online, they work just like they used to.

[@AslanKyoya1776]

0:41 Derpy Hooves!! All of that early 2010s nostalgia really gets me since I was in high school at that time, I can't believe it's been over a decade

[@ZizZap4]

Thanks for the tip-off that themes are still a thing, will need to look into that!

[@D1cksontello]

I love themeing! I themed Steam a handful of times, used to break Windows trying to install themes from XP era to 7 when you'd have to patch system files, and now work in web development where I had the pleasure of setting up a dark theme for our development system.

[@Ozzianman]

I do web design and had the pleasure of kitbashing stock photos together. The entire website was made out of images and also worked on phone with mobile specific images to make the page load a bit faster.

[@schmecklin377]

The steam deck has some really cool user made plug-ins for themes. You can make it look like a switch, wii, Xbox, or whatever

[@venade9997]

I'm gonna be honest here: I'm not from those times. Sure, i had a laptop with windows 7 in it back in like 2014 and i played stuff like club penguin and flash games, but im not exactly entirely from the current era, but not exactly from back then, which HURTS cuz i wish i could have those experiences, i like customization because it helps me express myself, so you can imagine how much i HATE minimalism. (not cuz its inherently bad, it could be fun, its because of overuse) When i saw the stuff about the Windows XP themes that were like, not just color changes but added some cool stuff and details into menus it actually blew my mind, so thank you for that, you showed me a whole new world, ill look into something similar for Windows 10. If anyone reading this know any cool websites, customization stuff, whatever remotely relating to this and old internet, you could do me a favour and tell me by answering this comment.

[@russianbear0027]

Tumblr still allows you to customize your page using HTML similar to the myspace stuff. Just make sure to use the desktop version of the site

[@salam-peace5519]

0:18 That "landscape" sound is so nostalgic for me. I remember when I just got my new Windows 7 laptop in 2012, I set it to the landscape theme, with that picture of a snowy park with a bridge, and these sounds. This combined with the Frutiger Aero design, which I still think is the most beautiful Windows design ever, gave it such a fresh, clean and pure happy feeling. Like starting into a new better age. Also I just found out that apparently Windows 7 had country-specific/language-specific themes that had unique sets of landscape pictures that were picked by people in the local Microsoft branches of these countries. I found this out when I looked for that specific snow bridge picture I used on my Windows 7 laptop, and found out it was apparently only in the german version of Windows 7. I agree that customizability needs to come back. Maybe one of the reasons why so many things removed customizability might be because of how fast our media life has become: Nowadays we perceive media so fast and in such a quantity that the design is kept as simple, blank and without details as possible, so you can only concentrate on the media you are watching. While back then, people might have taken more time to spend with certain media, so they didn't feel distracted if something had a lot of details and more complex design. It added to the overall experience. Our world has simply become so fast and overflooded with modern social media. Maybe that is just my subjective feeling because now I'm an adult who is active on different social media, while back in the Frutiger Aero age I was a teenager with more time.

[@tonyblox]

I totally feel you! I also like to customize anything and everything. Tweak it to your liking, your own! It's a great thing that you can customize the web on some levels, even if it is only for your experience.

[@sroc46ohio]

I love seeing how many variations there were, these were so pivotal in making things unique and fun and there was just so much love put in to making these cool custom things and sharing them online for other people to use! Bring BACK custom themes and skins!!