I like Windows 3.x and it's apps and games but I'm not a fan of Program Manager so I use Workplace Shell for Windows which gives it the OS/2 GUI. The window buttons don't change to the OS/2 ones so I use Makeover to edit the button images in the Windows driver file so they look like OS/2.
You and me both. With the exception of not having a real desktop, as that was popularized by the Mac (and later beautifully copied by Win9x), 3.x is favourite Windows UI by a long shot. It's just so clean, and professional looking. And it just screams "productivity" to me, for some reason.
I think it was very precise in its squareness (still unbeatable in joining and matching elements together with no gaps etc), and also well thought out in being keyboard navigable both iteratively via Tab and by shortcut keys through underlined letters (mnemonics). It also strictly followed the guideline saying that anything that would cause subsequent user interaction (like a file dialog) was indicated with “…” as in “Save” vs “Save as…”
No idea how much of this began in Windows but Windows 3.1 was an OS that had it all and it was very strictly followed in a coherent interface.
Sure, I liked the Windows 9x/NT/2K UI too but 3.x was special to me for being early to be so complete in terms of usability.
I realize it's not a consumer friendly experience, but typically when I set up a Linux or BSD machine, I don't bother with a desktop. Just a window manager. Sometimes a menu to launch stuff, but not always that even; sometimes xterm is enough.
I'm not big on visual file management. I do most of that through the command line.
I tried to make a GTK theme like that once. It sucked, not in the least because Win 3.x UI components are terrible at consistency: here you have 3d buttons, but other elements are 2d, here's this thing 1 pixel wide, and another 2 pixels wide for no reason at all, and here are whole classes of widgets that plain don't exist and every program has to roll its own (toolbars, for example; also look at Borland IDEs of the time, and MS Office too).
Windows 95 was quite revolutionary because it brought in a very consistent look and feel to the UI.
