But the problem with you billing yourself as a graphic designer and reimplementing Windows XP is that you’re copying a design that already exists rather than showcasing your own design skills, so I can’t immediately tell how good a designer you are[0].

I can look at your projects under the IE icon, which gives more of an impression, but some of the visuals there do look decidedly AI generated, which isn’t super-encouraging.

The UX is also weird. For example, the back/forward history controls behave like carousel controls through your portfolio, whereas when I hit back/previous I expect to be taken back to the menu of projects.

If you applied to me for a job with this, would I interview you?

Yes, I would, simply because I can see you’ve put a lot of effort in and created something high quality. But I’d have some reservations because of the concerns I’ve raised above and, in particular, I’d want to dig in to how user-centred your approach is, because that isn’t really demonstrated here.

Sorry if this sounds discouraging. What you’ve done is cool, and I like it, and it would certainly get you a foot in the door of many interview processes, but that will be when the real work of showcasing your skills begins.

I hope that makes sense?

[0] Literally, I could do this, and I suck at design. It’s very similar to the process of implementing a design passed to me by a UX Designer, which I’ve done loads of times.

Here goes:

1. "Welcome" on the login screen should be lowercase

2. Balloon is too high (should touch the icon), close icon is too small (should be roughly the same height as the balloon title)

3. About Me is missing the scrollbar on Firefox

4. Wrong gradient for "Social Links"

5. Start menu should have a shadow

6. In My Projects, two tiles are loading forever

7. Windows that cannot be maximized, but can be minimized, should have all three buttons, with the middle one disabled

8. Paint did not have the Windows logo in the corner. It would be better to show the JSPaint menu bar to make things like Undo accessible, and the JSPaint authors deserve attribution.

9. "Git Co-pilot" is not a thing, as Git ≠ GitHub. (On the XP project page.)

If I were making something like this, I would probably skip the boot and login screens (certainly would not require user interaction; indeed, XP would automatically log you in if you had a single passwordless user), and show "About Me" on startup, so that potential clients don’t give up before they learn more about you.

Another interesting aspect of this particular implementation is that it blends naturally with a browser tab hierarchy, it does not try to overrule it, it just blends in. Probably thanks to a distinctive taskbar, or maybe it is due to the startup screen/login/sound that set up a distinctive boundary "you are here now, and this is a friendly place to be".

edit: I'm new here! let me get some of that sweet sweet karma!

I opened the page before reading your post, and what immediately jumped out at me is that you say you’re a graphic designer but then you’re copying someone else’s old design which isn’t even that good.

The second thing I noticed was the obvious AI icon for the login, and that hovering on it makes it move weirdly. I haven’t used Windows XP in over two decades but don’t remember it doing that. It looks like an error.

At that point, I started losing confidence. You are supposed to be a graphic designer but are obviously using AI to design graphics and I assumed you would be doing the same for the code.

The resume as a fake PDF is cramped and zooming in feels like a poor solution.

Same thing with your projects, I can’t view them properly because they’re shoved in a tiny window for no reason. Plus, two of them are just loading animations, and it’s hard to understand if they’re broken or will ever load.

Then I finally read your post. You say you had no coding experience and used AI agents and “every decision was human”, but if you don’t know how to code, most of the decisions will have been made by the LLM even if you instructed it in particular ways. Do you feel confident regarding what you ostensibly learned and that you’d be able to reimplement most of the project yourself from scratch?

Again, it is interesting and a cool project, but it’s not particularly well-made or original¹ and I feel that as a portfolio actually does you a disservice by showcasing your skills in the worst possible light.

¹ https://win32.run

The core tension is between replication and creation. Yes, some things will always resemble what came before. A hard-boiled detective novel usually has a corpse or two, a bottle, and a wisecrack. But the artistry and work are in what you do with the formula. Take Les Roberts, for example. He wrote detective novels, sure, but he set them in Cleveland, gave them local color, and turned Northeast Ohio into a character. That's authorship. That's presence.

You can absolutely ask an AI to plot the story. But the soul, that point, is what you bring to it: the choices, the voice, the friction.

What gives me pause here is that I don't feel that presence. The project looks good, but it feels like Windows XP. Smooth, clean, and generic. I can't tell what this person's actual skills are. From the post, they clearly put in real time and effort. They learned something and got it working. But what I see is replication. Competent, yes. But flat, in my opinion.

If I were in their shoes, someone who would struggle to replicate this, I'd still treat that as step one.

Okay, I copied it. Now, what can I improve? What parts of the interface feel off? Where could I take a risk? Then, show the before and after.

So here's the long-winded point.

Why stop at imitation? Why not go further? Why not show that you can replicate something, build on it, shape it, and own it?

That's the more profound concern I have about AI collaboration. How do you show your work in a world of infinite templates and effortless iteration? How do you show your soul, or if you are too shy to bare your soul, at least a differentiator, that means you should be hired?

(I say this with the absolute irony that I used Grammarly to ensure this collection of words somewhat resembled a coherent thought. In the words of Dirty Harry, "A man has to know his limitations."[0]) ---

[0] Probably a misquote.

- The taskbar tabs are slightly off from how they looked in the real XP (must be the borders? It's the same issue with the windows as well).

- The close/maximize/minimize buttons never had hover transitions

- By default, desktop icons didn't have any hover effects in the real XP

- I'm surprised you didn't recreate the XP mouse cursor!

- IE6:

    - The address bar didn't show progress
    - The buttons in the toolbar at the top never had any transition effect on hover

The other thing is, I think the portfolio doesn't really match the quality of the website you vibe coded. This is actually a pretty bad sign that your own work is not as good as something you can do with AI (human assisted or not). The website is pretty high quality, so browsing through extremely simple assets just feels out of place.

Overall it's a good project.

Every time I see it, a part of me misses the styling of Windows XP. It was kind of the only well-regarded windows that tried to actually be fun; the fact that there was a little dog mascot in the search results, the fact that the bar on the bottom kind of looks like a Fisher Price toy, Clippy!

I kind of miss when professional programs were allowed to be goofy.

As a side note, I really like your avatar; has kind of a Simpsons/Bob's Burgers vibe that I find appealing.

Great site, thanks for nostalgia!

I disagree with others who complain that either the design was copied or a few little details are not exactly the same as the original – I don't think that's the point here.

Congrats!

You should open source this and let other people contribute and build apps that work inside this sim. I would love to build a version of our browser into this. (https://github.com/browseros-ai/BrowserOS)

It would be wonderful if you could also share or write a post about your vibe coding journey to put this together!

You'll find that programmers are a lot less prickly when you use AI to generate code, than say artists are, when you use it to generate pictures. You don't have to defend yourself, it's OK to use it to make cool things that you couldn't otherwise.

You should be aware though that even though it may "feel like magic" when just getting started, there's an upper limit to the complexity of what you can build with AI-generated code - it's very low quality and will start falling apart once you stack a lot of it. For the same reason I wouldn't recommend using it as a learning resource, if you really want to get into programming.

Its a lot of work setting everything you have up spend sometime on more details / applications

UI these days are flat everything and pretty boring.

Only bug I noticed was that the command line output doesn’t scroll. This was on my iPhone with the keyboard up as I was typing commands and press return.

https://windows96.net

Makes me wonder what windows mobile could have been

I wouldn't say this constitutes "original code". AI agents are trained on open-source software; to apply them and present this project as your own work is misleading.

Others have left good feedback regarding the UI inconsistencies that you should address.

If you really want this to reflect on your abilities as a graphic designer, you should make this "themeable." XP had multiple visual styles - there were variants of Luna, as well as the Royale theme that came with Media Center Edition, and other themes like the Zune theme. There were also numerous third-party user-created themes you could download and use (if you installed a dll patch).

You should consider adding a few of the standard themes - at the very least the silver, olive, and royale themes. But more importantly, you should make your own themes, and add them as options as well. Open up a dialog similar to XP's "Appearance" dialog on first run so users instantly know they will have that option.

It's great if you can recreate a user interface... but anyone can do that and many already have. What matters more is how you can build on the UI while remaining true to its design language and interaction paradigms. What uniqueness can you add to the UI?

Here are some links for inspiration:

- One example of this sort of thing is https://macthemes.garden/, which has thousands of Mac OS 8/9 themes.

- Here's the wikipedia article that goes over the first party XP themes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_visual_styles

- For examples of XP third party themes... I don't know any good websites off the top of my head but DeviantArt has had lots of 3rd party themes and style assets uploaded to it over the years (for both Windows and macOS): https://www.deviantart.com/search?q=windows+xp+themes

Use these as inspiration and come up with your own unique visual styles which would still feel at home with Windows XP. If you can do that, I think it will really impress people.

https://win32.run/

Good times.

Clients hire graphic designers for unique and modern designs. I get that WinXP is retro these days, but WinOS is also the antithesis of good design. Hacker News will love it, but design industry folks won't. Especially all the clicks and delays it takes to get to your actual work (hint: bounce rate).

You're competing with a lot of designers right now, so you need to show your best work up front to stand out. Just like you, your clients need to grab attention and establish trust for their products and services, which is why they're spending money to hire a graphic designer.

Now that you've made this, archive it as a Personal Design Experiment and add it to your portfolio so it can still be discovered.

Then, remove the WinOS skin from your actual portfolio. Take visitors straight to your projects page: it should be your homepage.

In each project: show your work. It doesn't have to be perfect, 5-star design. Make it clear what you personally designed vs AI-designed, so they know what they're paying you for. Did you make sketches? Revisions? Show 'em. Not everything, just samples. With those, describe your thought process and work process. Demonstrate that working with you is a positive, efficient experience.

That's what will get you hired.

Finally, your work so far is sports oriented. You many want to make that your focus for now. Think about what a sports-designer portfolio should look like: bold, powerful, action-oriented graphics.

While, if the author reached its goal and is happy about it, thats fair and fine - tho for me as a former webdev looking at the source and how its build well it basically yells AI... and absolutly not in a good way....

If you really want to learn coding - put the AI aside and learn it by yourself. You may use AI to search for documentations and stuff, but dont try to learn coding style/sturcturing from it ... because its very bad at it.

On my dell XPS13 (Windows) the high DPI scaling makes the page display "please rotate your device back to portrait mode" . If I zoom out a few steps (ctrl-minus in the browser), it loads fine.

otherwise, cool, nice, great work!

Good job, OP. Stay away from the haters.

otherwise, fun, great, keep going!

Only pet peeve I have is with the obvious AI generated art (including the wallpaper?) — still can't get onboard with them.

https://github.com/cloudflare/doom-wasm

=3

These kind of projects are fun to do, but as a showcase of your design skills... ehhhh? There are a few things that have your original design, like your résumé and such. Something like this is a much better showcase of your front-end coding skills, but you've delegated much of that to AI.

My advice: if you want to show off your programming skills, learn how to do it on your own. Don't do Windows XP right off the bat. Start with something simple. Make an Amiga "boing ball" bounce around the screen or something. Then tackle more complex challenges. It's not just about arriving at a finished product. By crafting something yourself, without machine assistance, you develop a better feel for what should be in the finished product and what shouldn't.

(It's OK to use dumb code generators to automate repetitive tasks, transpilers, etc. But there's a feel for when and how to use those as well.)

That said, I wonder if it makes sense for a graphic designer to have a portfolio with a design that just copies someone else's (Microsoft's)?

Now try windows93 [0]

enjoy.

[0] https://www.windows93.net

This is so absurdly cringe and absolutely not coding. It’s like saying I spent absolutely trying to get ChatGPT to write my college essay for me. At the end of the writing period, I wrote nothing but decided which ai goop I liked best.