November 25th, 2025
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The apocryphal origins of the Hot Dog Stand color scheme

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The Windows 3.1 Hot Dog Stand theme has been called the world’s worst theme, “the ugliest, most abhorrent, most terrifying pile of mismatchery that we have ever had the misfortune to behold.”

Where did this theme come from?

Buried in the comments of Jeff Attwood’s tribute to the Windows 3.1 “Hot Dog Stand” color scheme is a comment:

PJ14, Oct 2006

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.

I don’t know who PJ14 is, and I don’t know whether this story is true. Just sharing it, and you can decide how credible it sounds.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
History

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

7 comments

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  • Jeff Stoner

    I love how it got “verbed” in the comments. “… your duty to ‘Hot Dog Stand’ someone else’s machine if they leave it unlocked,” and “I used to hotdog stand my boss all the time.”

  • Alexey Shiryaev

    More than that, a link to a website where more screenshots are supposed to be is also dead 😂
    That name rings a bell for me, but I don’t remember what colors were exactly. So just imagegoogle it

  • BCS

    I kinda think that including clearly bad choices in the list of options has some utility. It say “just because it is here doesn’t imply we think it’s a good idea”.

    I’ve thought that having a standardized set of commercial software licenses (like the common FOSS licenses but not “free” by anyone’s definition) would have some value, but the set should include at least one that no sane company would agree to so that IT departments know they actually have to check which version is used and not just that it’s a standard license.

  • Maia Everett

    On the page linked via the “the world’s worst theme” link, the screenshot of the theme doesn’t load. I just have empty space where the screenshot would be. Maybe make another link directly to the screenshot?

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