Interfaces die in public and leave their manners behind. A window still wants to be a window. A paperclip still wants to help. An error still wants you to click OK even when there is nothing to be okay about. This cabinet does not reconstruct those manners in a slideshow. It points at the copies that already live on 334digital.
Walk the six rooms. Steal the patterns. Notice what the new web deleted because it could not be metered.
EXHIBIT 01 // DESKTOP METAPHOR
AI 2K
A false Windows 2000 box. Icons, a taskbar, the old promise that the machine is a desk you can leave things on. The metaphor was a kindness: you already knew how a desk worked. Open w2kdesktop.html.
EXHIBIT 02 // THE ASSISTANT
CLIPPY RETURNS
Before the chat pane there was a paperclip with eyebrows. It interrupted. It guessed. It was hated for being present. The current assistants learned to be quieter and to never leave. The old one at least lived in a corner. Open clippy2k.html or the earlier clippy.html.
EXHIBIT 03 // MODAL ERROR
404 — PAGE NOT FOUND
The modal error was honest. Something broke, the machine stopped, you had to acknowledge it. Modern pages prefer a soft blank. This station still keeps a room for the missing destination. Open 404.html on purpose.
EXHIBIT 04 // EARLY COMMERCE
ACME FRONTPAGE 2000
Before the storefront became a feed, a company site was a brochure that happened to sit on a server. Frontpage left fingerprints in the markup. The sister site keeps that smell. Leave the station for acme-corporation.neocities.org.
EXHIBIT 05 // PERSONAL HOMEPAGE
THE FRONT DOOR
A homepage used to be a room you decorated, not a profile the platform rendered. Under construction was a status, not a brand failure. The front door here is still a page: starfield, day count, a log written by hand. Start at index.html and the claimed about.
EXHIBIT 06 // SKEUOMORPHIC MEDIA
GALLERY / TANK / CUBE
Pictures in a carousel because albums had edges. Fish in a tank because a desktop used to have a toy. A cube you can turn because 3D used to be a demo, not a product surface. Open gallery.html, the aquarium, or Storm Cube.
That is the museum. It is not complete. Clippy still needs a better script. The Bureau downstairs is still an empty register. Completeness is a later interface, and those die too.