🖥️ Windows XP — Online Edition

A browser-based recreation of the Windows XP desktop experience, built with React and TypeScript.
🌐 Live Demo

✨ About

This project started as a simple Minesweeper game and gradually grew into a full Windows XP desktop simulation. It features a working taskbar, Start Menu, draggable windows, XP sound effects, and a collection of functional applications — all styled to match the original Luna theme as closely as possible.

💡 Tip: Double-click the Start button to enter fullscreen mode — perfect for an authentic retro experience without the modern browser bar.

📑 Table of Contents

🎮 Minesweeper

The app that started it all. A fully functional Minesweeper with three difficulty levels and a custom board option.

Beginner (9×9, 10 mines) · Intermediate (16×16, 40 mines) · Expert (16×30, 99 mines)
Custom board size (height 9–24, width 9–30, mines 10+)
Safe first click — mines are never placed on the first clicked cell or its neighbours
Flood fill reveal for empty cells
Flag 🚩 and question mark ❓ markers (toggleable)
Digital mine counter and timer (capped at 999)
Best times saved to localStorage per difficulty
Sound effects for clicks, win and loss
Animated face button (😊 / 😲 / 😎 / 💀)
Death cell highlighted in red

🎨 Paint

A feature-rich recreation of MS Paint with a full toolbox, colour palette and menu system.

Tools

✏️ Pencil · 🖌️ Brush (round, square, diagonal ×3 sizes) · 💨 Airbrush (3 sizes)
🪣 Fill bucket · 💧 Eyedropper · 🔤 Text (with Font toolbar — family, size, bold, italic, underline, vertical)
⬜ Rectangle · 🔲 Rounded Rectangle · ⭕ Ellipse · 🔷 Polygon · 〰️ Curve · ➖ Line
⬛ Eraser (4 sizes) · 🔍 Zoom (1×/2×/6×/8×) · ✋ Move (pan)
Rectangular and free-form selection — drag, copy, cut, delete, Ctrl+A

Canvas

Default size 700×400 px, resizable via Attributes dialog
Undo / Redo history · Invert Colours · Flip / Rotate · Stretch / Skew
Grid overlay (Ctrl+G) · Thumbnail preview (live, 150×100 px)
Save As .png · Open image file · View Bitmap (fullscreen)
Middle-mouse pan · Pinch-to-zoom on touch (0.25×–4×)
Custom cursors per tool

Colour palette — 40 classic XP colours, foreground/background swap

🌐 Internet Explorer

A working browser window powered by <iframe>, styled as Internet Explorer 6.

Full menu bar (File, Edit, View, Favourites, Tools, Help) with mnemonics and nested submenus
Standard toolbar (Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop, Home, Search, Favourites, History, Print…)
Address bar with favicon, live page title in the title bar
Navigation history (back / forward)
Status bar and toggleable toolbars
Blocked domains list (social media, modern news sites, adult content, AI tools…)
Custom error page when a blocked or unavailable site is requested
Multiple windows — open several IE windows simultaneously, each with its own navigation history, page title and favicon
Each open window appears as a separate taskbar button showing the current page title and favicon
File > New Window — opens a new IE window loaded with the current page
View Source — opens the current page's HTML source in Notepad

🕰️ Favourites — Retro Websites

All bookmarks point to period-accurate archived versions of real websites, sourced from the Wayback Machine (primarily 2001–2005).

Folder	Highlights
🔍 Search & Mail	Google, Seznam.cz, Seznam E-mail, ICQ, xChat, Centrum.cz
👥 Social	Lidé.cz, Spolužáci, Libimseti.cz, LinkedIn, Zpovědnice
🎮 Games	Superhry.cz, Českéhry.cz, Happy Tree Friends, Miniclip
🎬 Entertainment	Alena Pumprová, Nova.cz, Kinobox.cz, Lamer.cz, iDnes.cz, Očko TV
💻 Tech	Microsoft.com , Mobilmania.cz, MSN

🔢 Calculator

A two-mode calculator with keyboard support.

Standard mode

Basic arithmetic · Memory (MC / MR / MS / M+) · sqrt, %, 1/x
Digit grouping (cs-CZ locale)

Scientific mode

Trigonometry: sin, cos, tan with Inv (arcus) and Hyp modifiers
Angle modes: Degrees · Radians · Grads
log, ln, x², x³, xʸ, n!, π, 1/x, Int, F-E, Exp, dms
Bitwise: And, Or, Xor, Not, Lsh, Mod
Number bases: Hex · Dec · Oct · Bin — unavailable digits disabled automatically

💻 Terminal

A Command Prompt window with an authentic XP look and a set of working commands.

Font: Lucida Console · Width: 80ch · 25 visible lines
color XY supports 16 colours (e.g. color 0A = black background, green text)
systeminfo reveals developer info 🙂


Available commands:
  help       - Show this help
  cls        - Clear screen
  dir        - List installed apps with file sizes
  echo       - Print text
  ver        - Show Windows version
  date       - Show current date
  time       - Show current time
  systeminfo - Show system & developer info
  color XY   - Change background and text colour (16 colours)
  exit       - Close the window

📝 Notepad

A lightweight text editor with more features than you might expect.

Open and save .txt files
Undo / Redo (custom history stack)
Find — with Match Case, Wrap Around and Up/Down direction
Replace and Replace All
Word Wrap toggle
Insert Date/Time
Status bar: line, column, character count, encoding (UTF-8), line endings (CRLF)
Classic Windows XP encoding bug — typing "Bush hid the facts" or "what are you doing" and saving will garble the text on reopen

📝 WordPad

A recreation of WordPad with rich text formatting, built on a contentEditable document view.

Formatting

Formatting toolbar — font family and size picker (with TrueType/OpenType/bitmap type icons), font colour, bold, italic, underline
Paragraph alignment — left, center, right · bullet list toggle
Font dialog with live sample preview, strikeout and underline options, and colour picker
Paragraph dialog — left/right indentation and first-line indentation, paragraph alignment
Tabs dialog — set, clear and clear all custom tab stop positions, shown live as markers on the ruler
Pressing Tab jumps the cursor to the nearest custom tab stop, or a default 0.5" grid if none are set

Layout

Draggable ruler for adjusting left/right margins, with tab stop markers
Toggleable Toolbar, Format Bar, Ruler and Status Bar (View menu)

Editing

Undo / Redo (custom history stack, debounced snapshots)
Find and Replace (shared logic with Notepad), with alert when the searched word isn't found
Insert Date/Time
Insert Object dialog — including embedding a Paintbrush picture created and sent from Paint
Select All, Cut, Copy, Clear, each with the matching keyboard shortcut
Open / Save / Save As, unsaved-changes confirmation dialog, recent documents list

Integration

Right-click context menu
Works with the On-Screen Keyboard — types directly into the document
Full menu bar with mnemonics (File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Help)

🔤 Character Map

A recreation of the Windows XP Character Map utility for browsing and copying special characters from any installed font.

Font picker with TrueType/OpenType/bitmap type icons, matching the style used in WordPad's font picker
Character grid reads each font's actual glyph table (via opentype.js), so symbol and script fonts (Wingdings, Latha, Mangal…) show their real characters instead of the basic Latin set
Click a character to select it, double-click (or use Select) to add it to the copy field
Copy button copies the assembled string to the clipboard
Status bar shows the Unicode code point and character name of the current selection
Windows-1252 mapping for the 0x80–0x9F range, so typographic characters (€, en/em dash, curly quotes…) display correctly instead of control-code placeholders

📁 File Manager

A recreation of Windows Explorer with full folder navigation and multiple view modes.

Features

5 view modes — Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List, Details
Full folder tree navigation with Back / Forward / Up buttons and keyboard shortcuts (Backspace, Alt+←, Alt+→)
Breadcrumb address bar with clickable path segments
Sort by Name, Size, Type or Date Modified
Picture Viewer — inline image viewer with filmstrip, Prev/Next navigation (keyboard arrows supported) and rotation
Sidebar — context-aware Tasks, Other Places and Details panels, collapsible groups
History sidebar and Tip of the Day panel
Thumbnail previews for image files, photo folder preview (2×2 grid)
Status bar with object count and current path
Open .txt files directly in Notepad
Original Windows XP sample pictures and wallpapers

🐕 Search Companion (Rover)

The File Manager features a fully animated Rover — the original Windows XP Search Companion dog — powered by PNG frame sequences and a sprite sheet extracted from the original rover.acs Microsoft Agent file.

PNG animations — come, exit, ashamed, lick, reading, sleep, tired, haf, attention, speak and 10 idle variants
Sprite sheet animations — searching, pleased, congratulate, show, hide, thinking, shopping, sports, travel, money, writing and more, extracted directly from rover.acs
State machine — show on open → idle cycling → searching during search → pleased/characterSucceeds on success → ashamed on failure → tired → sleep after inactivity
Sound effects — sniffing, whining, tapping, snoring, barking and more from the original .wav resources
You rang? — click Rover to open the interaction panel; "Do a trick" plays a random idle or trick animation
Also available directly in Internet Explorer via the Search toolbar button or View > Explorer Bar > Search

🎵 Windows Media Player

A recreation of Windows Media Player 8, with full playlist support, visualizations, album art and skinnable Plus! themes.

Playback

Play, Pause, Stop, Previous, Next
Shuffle and Repeat modes
Play Speed — Slow (0.5×), Normal (1×), Fast (2×)
Volume control with XP-style slider and Mute toggle
Progress bar with seek support
Auto-advance to next track when a song ends
Keyboard shortcuts — Ctrl+P Play/Pause · Ctrl+S Stop · Ctrl+B Previous · Ctrl+F Next · Ctrl+H Shuffle · Ctrl+T Repeat · F8 Mute · F9 Volume Down · F10 Volume Up

Playlist & Library

Opens songs directly from File Manager (double-click .mp3)
Entire folder loaded as playlist automatically
Playlist shows track names and durations
Total playlist time displayed
Click any track in the playlist to jump to it
Open button launches File Manager to browse music

Visualizations

Album Art — displays cover image when available
Ambience — Water · Falloff · Swirl · Random
Bars and Waves — Bars · Ocean Mist · Fire Storm · Scope
Battery — Randomization · Lotus · Event Horizon · Smoke or Water?
Particle — Particle · Rotating Particle
Plenoptics — Random · Smokey Circles · Smokey Lines · Vox
Spikes — Spike
Musical Colors — Colors in Motion
Switch visualizations via menu or ✱ dropdown · cycle presets with ◀ ▶ buttons

UI

Full menu bar — File, View, Play, Tools, Help
Full Mode / Skin Mode toggle (Ctrl+1 / Ctrl+2)
Skin Mode — four selectable Windows Media skins (Nature, Space, Da Vinci, Aquarium), switchable via an in-app Skin Chooser
Aquarium skin includes a working-style equalizer drawer (bass / treble / balance) and volume drawer with a matching drawer-open/close animation
Video viewer overlay for playing video files directly within the skinned player
Fullscreen mode
Left sidebar with navigation categories
Taskbar integration — minimize and restore

🎨 Plus! Skins

Four Windows Media Player skins from Windows Plus!, switchable via the in-app Skin Chooser.

Plus! Aquarium	Plus! Da Vinci

Plus! Nature	Plus! Space

🃏 Solitaire

A recreation of Windows XP Solitaire with full game logic and scoring.

Draw One / Draw Three modes
Standard, Vegas and None scoring
Vegas Cumulative Score across games
Timed game with time bonus on win
Undo support
Outline dragging
12 card back designs
Drag & drop and click-to-move
Double-click to auto-move card to foundation
Keyboard shortcuts — F2 Deal · Ctrl+Z Undo

⌨️ On-Screen Keyboard

A recreation of the Windows XP On-Screen Keyboard accessibility tool, with a full menu system, multiple layouts and live typing into any focused field.

Typing

Types directly into the last focused input or textarea anywhere on the desktop
Sticky Shift — click left or right Shift to capitalise the next character (toggle on/off)
Caps Lock with active-state indicator
Editing keys — Backspace, Delete, Enter, Home, End and arrow keys with full cursor/selection logic (multi-line aware in textareas)
Windows key opens the Start Menu · Calculator key launches the Calculator
Optional click sound on key press (toggleable)

Views & Layouts

Enhanced / Standard keyboard views
Regular / Block layout
101 / 102 key modes (106-key mode reserved)
Function row (F1–F12), navigation cluster (Ins, Home, PgUp, Del, End, PgDn), numeric keypad and arrow keys

Menu & Settings

Full menu bar — File, Keyboard, Settings, Help — with mnemonics
Always on Top toggle
Font dialog — pick family, style and size from the installed Windows Fonts, with live sample preview
Welcome dialog on first launch, with a "Do not show this message again" option (remembered via localStorage)
About dialog

Window

Draggable, minimisable and fullscreen-capable XP window
Taskbar integration

🖥️ Windows Plus!

A recreation of the Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP control panel — a draggable, minimisable, fullscreen-capable window built with the original Plus! background artwork and CSS colours sourced from period-accurate references, complete with theme-specific menu sounds and a Start-Menu-style left navigation.

Navigation

Left sidebar menu — Digital Media, Games, Themes, Screen Savers, More Plus!, plus a Home hotspot that returns to the Welcome page
Welcome page with links to Release Notes (opens the GitHub release in Internet Explorer), Registration and About Plus!

Digital Media

Seven showcased products — Plus! Voice Command for Windows Media Player, Plus! MP3 Audio Converter, Plus! CD Label Maker, Plus! Speaker Enhancement, Plus! Personal DJ, Windows Media Player Skins, Plus! 3-D Visualizations
Click any product title to expand its description

Games

Three showcased games — Russian Square Plus! Edition, The Labyrinth Plus! Edition, HyperBowl Plus! Edition — each with artwork and description

Themes

Choose between the four Plus! themes (Aquarium, Space, Nature, Da Vinci) with a live background preview that updates instantly as you pick one
"Select the theme" jumps straight into Display Properties → Themes with the chosen theme preselected
See Windows Plus! Themes below for screenshots of all four themes applied to the desktop

Screen Savers

Eight screensavers — Aquarium, My Pictures, Space, Nature, Da Vinci, Robot Circus, Sand Pendulum, Mercury Pool — each with a live preview image
Preview runs the actual screensaver · Select this screen saver jumps into Display Properties → Screen Saver with the chosen screensaver preselected

More Plus

Thank-you page with links out to the real project website and GitHub repository
"Tell me when new versions are available" opt-in checkbox

About & Registration

Dedicated About Plus! dialog — period-accurate Windows Plus! about box with product info, version, product ID and image credits
Registration opens a dedicated Plus! error dialog

🎨 Display Properties

A faithful recreation of the Windows XP Display Properties dialog, accessible from the desktop icon or Start Menu.

Themes — switch between Windows XP and four Windows Plus! theme packs (Aquarium, Da Vinci, Nature, Space), each automatically applying matching wallpaper and screensaver
Desktop — 27 original XP wallpapers + 7 Plus! wallpapers, live CRT monitor preview, position (Stretch / Center / Tile), background color picker, Browse via File Manager
Screen Saver — 13 screensavers with live preview in CRT monitor, configurable wait time
Appearance — switch between three color schemes, live preview updates instantly without page reload
Settings — screen resolution slider (640×480 to 1600×1200) and color quality selector, CRT preview updates with blur and saturation effects based on selected resolution

🖼️ Color Themes

Three built-in Windows XP color schemes, switchable live from Display Properties → Appearance.

Default (blue)	Olive Green	Silver

🖼️ Windows Plus! Themes

Four theme packs from Windows Plus!, switchable from Display Properties → Themes, or from the dedicated Windows Plus! control panel window — custom cursor sets, wallpapers, theme-specific system sounds and a matching Recycle Bin icon for each theme.

Plus! Aquarium	Plus! Da Vinci

Plus! Nature	Plus! Space

🪟 Desktop & Shell

Taskbar — shows open applications, active/minimised state, live clock, volume icon and a security notification balloon (appears after 5 seconds)
Volume Control — full sndvol32-style mixer opened from the taskbar volume icon: master "Volume Control" plus Wave, SW Synth, Line In and CD Audio channels, each with its own volume slider, balance and Mute. Wave drives all system sounds and CD Audio drives Windows Media Player playback. Includes Options/Help menu with mnemonics and an About dialog. A simple volume popup is also available directly from the taskbar.
Start Menu — full two-panel layout with user avatar (Alena 🐱), pinned apps, All Programs submenu (Accessories, Games), right panel with system shortcuts, Log Off and Turn Off Computer buttons
Run dialog — launch apps by command (notepad, calc, mspaint, iexplore, cmd, explorer, wmplayer, desk.cpl, osk…), with command history dropdown and Browse button
Desktop icons — My Computer, Internet Explorer, Minesweeper, Solitaire, Paint, Calculator, Terminal, Notepad, Wordpad, Recycle Bin, Windows Media Player...qq
Desktop icon layout automatically recomputes on window resize and fullscreen toggle, while preserving any icons the user has manually repositioned
Error dialogs — appNotFound, accessDenied, hardDriveFailure, renameExtension — each with the correct icon and button set
Login Screen — Windows XP-style login displayed on startup, pre-filled credentials, also gates browser autoplay restrictions
XP Loading Screen — animated progress bar, Windows XP logo, startup sound, shown on startup and after Restart

Shutdown Screen — Turn Off Computer and Log Off dialogs opened from the Start Menu, with Stand By / Restart / Switch User options and animated grayscale overlay

🌐 Browser Support

Best experienced in Chrome and Edge. Some features may not work correctly in Firefox.

On screens narrower than 900px, the desktop is replaced with a "This application is designed for desktop use only" notice — recreating Windows XP, with its fixed-size windows and pixel-perfect Luna styling, simply doesn't belong on mobile.

🛠️ Tech Stack

React 18 + TypeScript
Vite (with manual chunk splitting per app)
Custom hooks — useDraggable, useDraggableDialog, useWindowState, useSound, usePaintHistory, usePaintSelection, usePaintShapeDrawing, usePaintPanning, usePaintFileActions, useCalculatorLogic, useRoverAnimation, useChannels, useRoverStateMachine, useWordpadEditor, usePlusTheme, useScreensaverTimer, useIEInstance
Pure CSS — no UI library, custom XP Luna variables, bevel utilities, original Luna scrollbar graphics, and active/inactive window states

🔊 Assets & Credits

🔉 XP Sounds — joshlalonde on DeviantArt
🖼️ XP Icons (high-res) — WinClassic.net
🖼️ XP Icons (alternative) — ducbao414/win32.run on GitHub
🕰️ Archived websites — Wayback Machine
🎨 WMP Skins and Icons — WMP Goodies
🎵 XP Soundtrack — Internet Archive
🐕 Rover PNG frames & sounds — youngjae99/rover-app on GitHub
🃏 Solitaire card graphics — DualBrain/Solitaire on GitHub
🖱️ XP Cursors — rw-designer.com · giathinh111 on DeviantArt
🖼️ XP Bitmaps & Wallpapers — dvd3000.ca

📄 License

The source code of this project is released under the MIT License.

This is a non-commercial, fan-made preservation project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Windows XP, the Luna visual style, system sounds, icons, and fonts are property of Microsoft Corporation and are not covered by the MIT License. See the NOTICE file for full attribution of third-party assets.

🚧 Coming Soon

🖼️ Image Viewer — a standalone picture viewer, independent of File Manager

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 460 Commits
Documents and Settings/Administrator		Documents and Settings/Administrator
Program Files/Games/Minesweeper		Program Files/Games/Minesweeper
documents		documents
public		public
screenshots		screenshots
scripts		scripts
src		src
.claudeignore		.claudeignore
.gitignore		.gitignore
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
NOTICE		NOTICE
README.md		README.md
desktop.png		desktop.png
eslint.config.js		eslint.config.js
index.html		index.html
package-lock.json		package-lock.json
package.json		package.json
tsconfig.app.json		tsconfig.app.json
tsconfig.json		tsconfig.json
tsconfig.node.json		tsconfig.node.json
vite.config.ts		vite.config.ts

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🖥️ Windows XP — Online Edition

✨ About

📑 Table of Contents

Apps & Games

Appearance

System

Project

🎮 Minesweeper

🎨 Paint

Tools

Canvas

🌐 Internet Explorer

🕰️ Favourites — Retro Websites

🔢 Calculator

Standard mode

Scientific mode

💻 Terminal

📝 Notepad

📝 WordPad

Formatting

Layout

Editing

Integration

🔤 Character Map

📁 File Manager

Features

🐕 Search Companion (Rover)

🎵 Windows Media Player

Playback

Playlist & Library

Visualizations

UI

🎨 Plus! Skins

🃏 Solitaire

⌨️ On-Screen Keyboard

Typing

Views & Layouts

Menu & Settings

Window

🖥️ Windows Plus!

Navigation

Digital Media

Games

Themes

Screen Savers

More Plus

About & Registration

🎨 Display Properties

🖼️ Color Themes

🖼️ Windows Plus! Themes

🪟 Desktop & Shell

🌐 Browser Support

🛠️ Tech Stack

🔊 Assets & Credits

📄 License

🚧 Coming Soon

About

Topics

Resources

License

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Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases 11

Packages 0

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Contributors

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Languages

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