Yesterday's post about code syntax color schemes got me thinking about what is perhaps the ultimate color scheme, Windows 3.1's "Hot Dog Stand":
Check it out, the last Windows 3.1 computer was just located:
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/12/127/127784.html
It may have been included as a joke, but I saw a lot of office workers that had it as their color scheme. I love how the screenshot has “Microsoft Bob” in it too!
I personally witnessed a credit union where all teller workstations in all branches had the hot dog scheme, thanks to a funny IT guy. The tellers hated it but didn’t know how to change it 
That’s been my color scheme for years! It’s not a joke, it’s downright serious! YEEEEEHAAAAWWW!
At my previous employer it is your duty to “Hot Dog Stand” someone else’s machine if they leave it unlocked at a client site.
Man, I LOVED that theme.
For your sake, I hope you’re kidding.
HAHA! I used to hotdog stand my boss all the time.
It drove him nuts because he couldnt read anything and had no idea how to change it back.
Later on I became his boss at a different company, luckily we use WIN 2k there.
i have a windows 3.1 computer i use my xp one though windows 3.1 is stupid
How can I use Hot Dog on Win XP??
The notorious “Hot Dog Stand” was often used by some people, and sometimes for good reason.
For some people with certain forms of colour blindness, the colors actually look better then most of the others. And the contrasts were often better if somebody was useing a monochrome monitor (like the early “Papar White VGA” monitors).
However, when seen in colour by normal people, they were ugly as sin.
Actually I still have an old XT PC running windows 3.1 (upgraded from 1.1) 5 1/4 floppy, 20 MB hard drive and 8MB RAM !!! It sits in a corner in the workshop and every so often I fire it up and have a play.
Might be worth something one day.
I still have a thinkpad 775c with 3.1 and norton desktop. With on of the early versions of winzip, its quite amusing to play with it, and the games are alot better than any of the standard XP ones.
I used windows 3.1 in past and i was very happy of it… It’s so nostalgic…
At first thought it seems it might be for colour-blind people, but after testing thouse colours on http://gmazzocato.altervista.org/colorwheel/wheel.php
it would only aprear to result in a dark brownish colour scheme for people with Deuteranope and Protanope colour-blindness, so in short that don’t even look like an excuse
I think they were in cohoots with either monitor manaufacturers, or screen savers manufactures. Anyone leaving their desktop untouched for a few minutes with that on there will kill old time monitors.
I’ve actually met the lady who designed Hot Dog for Microsoft. She presented a great seminar on UI design at a UK VB conference (about 1997). She claimed that Hot Dog was a challenge from the Windows 3.1 team to come up with the worst scheme possible.
The yellow background should be quite good for people with dyslexia.
Quite upsetting for the rest of us, though.
Brilliant!