iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrew @lisagui.com · 19/09/2026

LisaGUI’s piano is partially based on the Lisa Toolkit example. I was also inspired by the Macintosh’s piano demo from the “MOUSING AROUND” tutorial on the original “Guided Tour of Macintosh” disk from 1984. #appleLisa #macintosh #apple #1bit #pcspeaker

A window containing a piano keyboard running on the Lisa Office System, with keys spanning 3 octaves.

A window of the Piano demo section of the original Macintosh’s “MOUSING AROUND” tutorial. It contains a smaller piano keyboard, with keys spanning about 4.5 octaves.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 12/09/2026

Using base64 for inline image serialization now. It's kind of cool how you can sort of see the image through the encoding.

A 1-bit bitmap of a triangle encoded into base64

The same triangle as it appears in the ui.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 01/09/2026

Updated the blog to use GNU Unifont for the body text. I adjusted the colors for the light and dark themes; I'm still playing around with them so don't hate it too much

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 01/09/2026

With this on the homepage, how can you doubt the year of the Linux desktop is upon us

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 29/08/2026

The video didn't upload, lol, so here it is in a reply. Well now I have more room so here are some tags: #appleLisa #1-bit #1bit #retrocomputing #apple #macintosh #javascript #gui #ux #ui

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 29/08/2026

Reorganized the preference pane system. It purposefully no longer remembers the selected pane, which is more in-line with the actual Lisa, and settings apps on other OSs. I also added the "Set all convenience settings to defaults" option from the original Lisa. Added it to the animations pane too.

Items in the view menu are bulleted to indicate their subordinacy to their parent panes.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 27/08/2026

Sure, half the people who even look at this blog have ad blockers which will filter these out, but that doesn't mean I still can't have fun. Naturally, had to add :focus-visible selectors so you can tab through the page #css #blog #dos #textmode

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 27/08/2026

Added some share links. I should be able to have share links. Other blogs have share links! I'll admit right now, I have no idea if some of these work correctly. I'm not even on all of these platforms, lol. I'll be sure to add a few more untested links sometime later

Social media share links on my blog, dark theme

Social media share links on my blog, light theme

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 18/08/2026

I decided it does make sense to use the Lisa's horizontal pointer cursor for these selectable lists. It's a bit awkward, but it makes sense.

A vertical list of textual menu items. A pointer cursor (a hand pointing to the right) is pointing to one of them.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 16/08/2026

A new LisaGUI build is out: - Dragging icons within a folder nudges the scroll position - Automatic repositioning of icons is animated. This occurs when "straightening up" a folder (auto-arranging the icons), when putting a file away from the desktop, and on shutdown. #apple #ux #icons #appleLisa

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 05/08/2026

Adjusted the styling of LisaGUI's mobile click cursor. Also, no one asked for it, but the brightness of the color palette of the favicon now matches the display.

A screenshot of LisaGUI with two circular overlays. The one on the left has a slight blur and an embossed rim. The one on the right is a simple flat overlay.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 05/08/2026

Released a new LisaGUI build with a bug fix - open items were displayed on the desktop regardless of whether they were placed there. Also, the pointer icon has been updated to one that's a bit more authentic, based on one of the LisaGuide icons.

On the left: LisaGUI's pointer icon. On the right: An icon from the original LisaGuide tutorial application

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 04/08/2026

This was done for the physical CDs of classic Mac OS apps. They would literally split up images into a bunch of icons with blank titles. I find the resourcefulness of this approach much more charming (maybe it's my rose tinted glasses speaking). Anyone know of a collection of screenshots of these?

The Journeyman Project 3 Legacy of Time CD window in Mac OS 9 showing an image positioned above the installer, readme, and registration icons. The image is technically made up of a grid of 32x32 icons precisely positioned within the window.

The same window as the last image, but the icons have been automatically arranged in a grid. Thus, the picture from the previous image has been split into its constituent icons, of which only some are visible within the window frame.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 03/08/2026

LisaGUI has touch controls; dragging one half of the screen moves the pointer; the other half presses the mouse button. I'm now using a second cursor instead of highlighting the entire mouse button div (it looked awful). This still needs more polish, but you can try it out in the latest build.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 28/07/2026

I wonder if some added text will garner more likes

Text next to an upvote button that says “…like this? Click here”

Text next to an upvote button that says “Thanks! :)”

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 22/07/2026

1/3 I added a new banner to LisaGUI's homepage. The power button brightens a bit on hover, and fully turns on when the banner is clicked. In the future I really ought to take a photo with better lighting on the front, but this should be fine for now. #css #apple #webdesign #appleLisa

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 21/07/2026

Added a scrolling marquee for lisagui.com's media links.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 15/07/2026

Pushing a new LisaGUI build with a ton of bug-fixes and a new rendering algorithm which can be turned on in the developer settings.

A screenshot of the “Developer” preferences pane in the LisaGUI preferences app. The “Developer” pane title and the setting for “Change the Compositing Algorithm” are circled in red.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 28/06/2026

Adjusted the blog's formatting. Darkened the gray in the dark theme's palette, trading off some authenticity for better readability, which I think is worth it. I also adjusted the post-list formatting so it more closely resembles a DOS file browser like Norton Commander. #blog #css #MSDOS

A screenshot of my blog, with white text on a gray background. It has a list of posts within a smaller rectangle with a blue background. The post list is enclosed within a white double-border and has two columns: dates in white text, and post titles in cyan text. The columns are split by a solid border. The post titles are formatted to look like pathnames. All text is set in the IBM VGA monospaced bitmap font.

A screenshot of Norton Commander 5, a DOS application with a split-pane view. The background is blue, with cyan and white text, all set in the IBM VGA monospaced bitmap font. In the right-hand pane is information about a PC’s disk drive. In the left-hand pane is a directory listing with columns for name, date, and size.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 22/06/2026

#Apple's magic mouse's form factor has been in use since 2009. I kept waiting for them to release a revised version with better ergonomics, and they never did. Can you imagine if they had kept the hockey puck mouse around until at least 2015? That's what this feels like.

Apple’s infamous “hockey puck” mouse. A rounded, fully-plastic, translucent-white circular object with two translucent Bondi-blue grips on either side.

Apple’s Magic Mouse. The top is a glossy white plastic arched rounded-rectangle surface, and underneath is a silver anodized-aluminum shape. It resembles two interlocking hyperbolic surfaces, like two Pringles chips connected at their edges.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 21/06/2026

I unified the toolbar buttons on my homepage (at larger widths). It looks so much better now. #css #aqua #frutigerAero yaros.ae

A dark-theme version of a rounded, segmented toolbar made up of glossy, aqua-style buttons labeled with text. The buttons read, from left to right, “homepage,” “downloads,” “web-log,” and “social links.”

A light-theme version of a rounded, segmented toolbar made up of glossy, aqua-style buttons labeled with text. The buttons read, from left to right, “homepage,” “downloads,” “web-log,” and “social links.”

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 23/03/2026

It's so nice to have a user interface which brings attention to my content without getting in the way. #tahoe #apple #macos

Screenshot of a QuickTime player window in macOS. The playback controls are on a temporary overlay which covers half the area of the window.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 26/02/2026

I've also added an option to access the "Startup from" menu via the service menu. In addition, I've updated the icon used for IndexedDB volumes.

A dropdown menu titled "Startup from" with three menu options; each option consists of an icon representing a disk, and text (to the right of each icon) specifying the name of the disk.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 26/02/2026

One of the options in the service menu is "Adjust Video" which is used to calibrate the screen. This makes sense on a real Lisa, of course, but isn't really that useful for LisaGUI unless you're running it on a CRT. If you're *actually* using LisaGUI on a CRT, please send me a photo.

A rectangular grid of white lines on a black background.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 26/02/2026

Added a "service menu" accessed by holding the space bar at startup. The option to reset display scaling settings has been moved here. #1bit #javascript #appleLisa #solodev #apple #retrocomputing #gui #ui #ux

A dropdown menu titled "options" with the following menu options: "Start and reset display options," "Select startup volume," "Adjust video," and "Restart system"

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 12/02/2026

This menu is now fully implemented. You will be able to access it by holding down the "s" key as soon as the system starts up. The first option, "Install Diskette," is the same temporary volume created the first time you start LisaGUI (or if no other volumes are present). #appleLisa #js #apple

LisaGUI’s "startup from" menu - a drop down menu with three different options listed vertically. Each option contains, from right to left, an icon representing the disk, and the text of the disk’s name.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 11/02/2026

Most importantly, it doesn't *look* bad. I'll incorporate keyboard shortcut functionality at a later date; it's not terribly important right now.

The Lisa 1’s "startup from" menu, which lets a user select between disks at startup.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 11/02/2026

Now, I realize that isn't accurate to the Lisa's firmware, which only displays the keyboard shortcut for each menu option. Since each "disk" is just an IndexedDB database, and they will be displayed in an arbitrary order, a bunch of unlabeled menu items won't be useful.

The Lisa 2’s "startup from" menu, which lets a user select between disks at startup. This is what LisaGUI’s menu is modeled after, except instead of displaying the names of the disks, keyboard shortcuts (Apple key + 1, apple key + 2, etc.) are displayed next to each icon.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 11/02/2026

"Startup from" menu WIP

LisaGUI’s "startup from" menu: A dropdown menu with several options. Each option has an icon representing either a floppy disk or a hard drive. To the right of each icon, the name of the disk it represents is listed.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 27/11/2025

While I was at it, figured I might as well do a quick and dirty Win8 BSoD 404 page for the rest of my site

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 25/11/2025

(after some tweaking)

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 23/11/2025

New formatting for the blog's 404 page

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 12/10/2025

This may be an odd question, but does anyone know what font was used for the MS-DOS packaging/branding in the early 90s? #retrocomputing #design #typography #fonts

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 29/09/2025

Added some UI feedback for trackpad mode. When you drag along the trackpad side of the screen, you get a larger circular cursor underneath your finger. When you press on the button side, a visible shadow appears. This feature is a work in progress and may be a bit buggy.

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 24/09/2025

Some more updates for my website: I added an additional icon pack to the downloads page, and a newer version of the emulator icon pack. yaros.ae/downloads/ #icons #emulators #emulation #macintosh #apple #retrocomputing #ux #ui

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Andrew @lisagui.com · 20/09/2025

I added an icon for Snow to my emulator icon pack: yaros.ae/downloads/#e... #icons #emulators #emulator #macintosh #snow #apple #retrocomputing #ux #ui #artwork #art

A squircle-shaped, blue, lightly textured icon with a glass CRT display, floppy disk drive, and emblem, resembling an old Macintosh Plus computer. A snowflake icon is present on the emblem and the display.

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