The Windows XP aesthetic will forever have a spot in my heart. It might not have the rugged charm or cult following of its predecessor Windows 98, but that corny green hill with bright blue sky, paired with the system’s rounded corners and vivid color scheme, brings back fond memories of my very first PC — and that’s priceless to me.
That’s why I was delighted to discover XP.css — a design system that makes it easy to create XP-inspired user interfaces. XP.css was inspired by 98.css, another CSS library which helps you design UIs in the likeness of Windows 98.
The library comes with several pre-styled elements, including buttons, windows, checkboxes, sliders, tabs, and dropdown menus.
It’s also got a command prompt template, which I’m a huge fan of:
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Just like 98.css, XP.css relies on semantic HTML and doesn’t contain any JavaScript, which means you can easily apply it to a variety of frontend projects. It simply styles your HTML with a bit of CSS.
The best thing about this project is that it’s MIT licensed, which should give you enough freedom to override the styles and adjust them to your needs.
Those curious to check out the code behind XP.css can head to this GitHub repo.
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