To me, buttons and icons provide the visual cue that "clicking here does something", without having to mouse over them to discover that they're clickable.
It's the unadorned text strings that aren't as obvious.
Yea, I agree that Office 2003 was the pinnacle of Office UI design. And I'd go so far as to say that about Windows 2000.
Having controls in predictable shapes and locations really contributed to "ease of use". One of my pet peeves is the more recent trend where clickable elements aren't obviously so. Such as a string of text that one has to hover across and see the cursor change shape to know that it's clickable.
As others have said, I think a significant part of why the UIs have changed since then is to accommodate touch screens and "webification".
'Glad to see your posting. I thought I was just being curmudgeonly :)
Beverly Hillbillies, I Dream of Jeannie, Mission Impossible
I like to put a little bit of nutmeg in mushroom soup. It adds a little more dimension to the flavor.
That post title brings back memories:
It was 1981 and my mom was having a hard time getting over the passing of my dad. So for a while, I occasionally took her to the movies.
One Saturday, I took her to see "Heavy Metal".
She watched attentively with nary a comment.
Afterwards, I expected her to say something about it, given its mature content.
And, as we were passing through the lobby, she did:
"That was a cartoon."
Reminds me of "Demon Seed" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed
I have the same question, mainly because it seems like the Plex interface is trying too hard to show stuff that's not on my local server.
When I'd spend a summer week at my Grandma's in the early '60s, my cousin would take me to Luke's Store, where a dollar would buy a bag full of candies. Always included was a sleeve of Necco wafers.
I liked the flavors and would try to eat them slowly, but usually ended up crunching through them.
In 2018 when the Necco company went bankrupt, I was traveling a bit for work and would buy bags full wherever I found them. It was a relief when the Spangler company bought the brand and resumed production.
"Scream and Scream Again", 1970.
Our parents dropped us off at the theater to see something else, like "The Love Bug", but it had moved on and we randomly ended up seeing this horrifying film.
We were not ready for dismemberment and dissolving bodies in vats of acid...
"Faster than the Speed of Life" - Steppenwolf