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62-399: See History of the graphical user interface for a more detailed discussion of GUI development. Sketchpad was the earliest program ever to use a complete graphical user interface . The clever way the program organizes its geometric data pioneered the use of master ( objects ) and occurrences ( instances ) in computing and pointed forward to object-oriented programming . The main idea

124-450: A disk operating system such as TRSDOS or MS-DOS . The application was popular at the time and included a number of programs like Draw, Text and Calendar, as well as attracting outside investment such as Lotus 1-2-3 for DeskMate. MSX-View was developed for MSX computers by ASCII Corporation and HAL Laboratory . MSX-View contains software such as Page Edit, Page View, Page Link, VShell, VTed, VPaint and VDraw. An external version of

186-620: A light pen , rather than a mouse, as the pointing device. The concept of a multi-panel windowing system was introduced by the first real-time graphic display systems for computers: the SAGE Project and Ivan Sutherland 's Sketchpad . In the 1960s, Douglas Engelbart 's Augmentation of Human Intellect project at the Augmentation Research Center at SRI International in Menlo Park, California developed

248-417: A pointing stick or touchpad , and smartphones and tablet computers have a touchscreen . The influence of game computers and joystick operation has been omitted. Early dynamic information devices such as radar displays, where input devices were used for direct control of computer-created data, set the basis for later improvements of graphical interfaces. Some early cathode-ray-tube (CRT) screens used

310-575: A trash-can icon on the screen. The Macintosh, in contrast to the Lisa, used a program-centric rather than document-centric design. Apple revisited the document-centric design, in a limited manner, much later with OpenDoc . There is still some controversy over the amount of influence that Xerox's PARC work, as opposed to previous academic research, had on the GUIs of the Apple Lisa and Macintosh, but it

372-475: A workstation incorporating many of PARC's innovations. Although not commercially successful, Star greatly influenced future developments, for example at Apple , Microsoft and Sun Microsystems . Released by digital imaging company Quantel in 1981, the Paintbox was a color graphical workstation with supporting of mouse input, but more oriented for graphics tablets ; this model also was notable as one of

434-623: A "similar program" and T-Square was developed by Peter Samson and one or more fellow MIT students in 1962, both for the PDP-1 . The Computer History Museum holds program listings for Sketchpad. Sketchpad ran on the MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 (1958) computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which had 64k of 36-bit words . The user drew on the computer monitor screen with

496-479: A GUI for the MS-DOS operating system was released in 1985. The market's response was less than stellar. Windows 2.0 followed, but it wasn't until the 1990 launch of Windows 3.0 , based on Common User Access that its popularity truly exploded. The GUI has seen minor redesigns since, mainly the networking enabled Windows 3.11 and its Win32s 32-bit patch. The 16-bit line of MS Windows were discontinued with

558-540: A backdrop, borderless window sitting atop a blank screen. With the introduction of AmigaOS 2.0, however, the user was free to select whether the main Workbench window appeared as a normally layered window, complete with a border and scrollbars, through a menu item. Amiga users were able to boot their computer into a command-line interface (also known as the CLI or Amiga Shell). This was a keyboard-based environment without

620-592: A coloured cell block) for the mouse pointer. When the display adapter lacks the ability to change the character's shapes, they default to the CP437 character set found in the adapter's ROM . Some popular utility suites for MS-DOS, as Norton Utilities (pictured) and PC Tools used these techniques as well. DESQview was a text mode multitasking program introduced in July 1985. Running on top of MS-DOS , it allowed users to run multiple DOS programs concurrently in windows. It

682-592: A combination of both and work with users' familiar knowledge to help them understand 'the unfamiliar', and placed in the terms so the user may better understand. An example of an interface metaphor is the file and folder analogy for the file system of an operating system . Another example is the tree view representation of a file system, as in a file manager . In the mid-twentieth century, computers were extremely rare and used only by specialists. They were equipped with complicated interfaces comprehensible only to these select few. In 1968, Douglas Engelbart gave

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744-587: A demonstration which astonished executives at Xerox . They began work on what would eventually become the Xerox Alto . In 1973, Xerox completed work on the first personal computer , the Xerox Alto, which had a sophisticated graphical user interface (GUI) involving windows, icons, menus and a pointer. ( WIMP ) Unfortunately, the Xerox Alto and its successor, the Xerox Star , were far too expensive for

806-427: A directory launches the application rather than opening the directory. The application's executable files and resources are contained within the directory, but normally they remain hidden from the user. Because applications are self-contained, this allows drag-and-drop installation and removal. Files are normally typed. RISC OS has some predefined types. Applications can supplement the set of known types. Double-clicking

868-517: A file with a known type will launch the appropriate application to load the file. The RISC OS Style Guide encourages a consistent look and feel across applications. This was introduced in RISC OS 3 and specifies application appearance and behaviour. Acorn's own main bundled applications were not updated to comply with the guide until RISCOS Ltd 's Select release in 2001. The outline fonts manager provides spatial anti-aliasing of fonts,

930-606: A partially visible window, as is the common way in other GUIs. Interface metaphor In user interface design , an interface metaphor is a set of user interface visuals, actions and procedures that exploit specific knowledge that users already have of other domains. The purpose of the interface metaphor is to give the user instantaneous knowledge about how to interact with the user interface. They are designed to be similar to physical entities but also have their own properties (e.g., desktop metaphor and web portals ). They can be based on an activity, an object ( skeuomorph ), or

992-547: A pre-IPO purchase of Apple stock) and a number of PARC employees subsequently moved to Apple to work on the Lisa and Macintosh GUI. However, the Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding manipulatable icons, and drag and drop manipulation of objects in the file system (see Macintosh Finder ) for example. A list of the improvements made by Apple, beyond the PARC interface, can be read at Folklore.org. Jef Raskin warns that many of

1054-447: A sort of help box, because the metaphor is not always going to be clear enough for them to understand, no matter how much effort its programmers devote to making it resemble something the users understand. Experts, on the other hand, understand what is going on with the technical aspects of an interface metaphor. They know what they want to do and they know how to do it—and so they design shortcuts to facilitate achieving their goals. While

1116-652: A striking resemblance to both Macintosh, and to the Alto's interface. Windows eventually overtook Apple in the PC market to become the predominant GUI-based operating system. Software designers attempt to make computer applications easier to use for both novice and expert users by creating concrete metaphors that resemble the users' real-world experiences. Continual technological improvement has made metaphors depict these real-world experiences more realistically to ultimately enhance interface performance. Beginning users, however, could use

1178-467: Is clear that the influence was extensive, because first versions of Lisa GUIs even lacked icons. These prototype GUIs are at least mouse-driven, but completely ignored the WIMP ( "window, icon, menu, pointing device") concept. Screenshots of first GUIs of Apple Lisa prototypes show the early designs. Apple engineers visited the PARC facilities (Apple secured the rights for the visit by compensating Xerox with

1240-543: The Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE)—Computer Society's Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco on December 9, 1968. It was so-called The Mother of All Demos . The idea of multiple overlapping and resizable windows on a "desktop" is commonly, and incorrectly, attributed to Xerox PARC and its Alto . The Xerox Alto's windowing system

1302-448: The WIMP "window, icon, menu and pointing device" paradigm. There have been important technological achievements, and enhancements to the general interaction in small steps over previous systems. There have been a few significant breakthroughs in terms of use, but the same organizational metaphors and interaction idioms are still in use. Desktop computers are often controlled by computer mice and/or keyboards while laptops often have

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1364-597: The oN-Line System (NLS). This computer incorporated a mouse-driven cursor and multiple windows used to work on hypertext . Engelbart had been inspired, in part, by the memex desk-based information machine suggested by Vannevar Bush in 1945. Much of the early research was based on how young children learn. So, the design was based on the childlike characteristics of hand–eye coordination , rather than use of command languages , user-defined macro procedures, or automated transformation of data as later used by adult professionals. Engelbart publicly demonstrated this work at

1426-606: The 1980s. GEM received widespread use in the consumer market from 1985, when it was made the default user interface built into the Atari TOS operating system of the Atari ST line of personal computers. It was also bundled by other computer manufacturers and distributors, such as Amstrad . Later, it was distributed with the best-sold Digital Research version of DOS for IBM PC compatibles, the DR-DOS 6.0. The GEM desktop faded from

1488-475: The 36 bits available to store each display spot in the display file, 20 gave the coordinates of that spot for the display system and the remaining 16 gave the address of the n-component element responsible for adding that spot to display. The TX-2 was an experimental machine and the hardware changed often (on Wednesdays, according to Sutherland). By 1975, the light pen and the cathode-ray tube with which it had been used had been removed. The Sketchpad program

1550-471: The 80-column basic text mode compatible with the original MDA display adapter), a series of file managers arose, including Microsoft 's DOS Shell , which features typical GUI elements as menus, push buttons, lists with scrollbars and mouse pointer. The name text-based user interface was later invented to name this kind of interface. Many MS-DOS text mode applications, like the default text editor for MS-DOS 5.0 (and related tools, like QBasic ), also used

1612-472: The Amiga1000) named the whole OS "Workbench". Since then, users and CBM itself referred to "Workbench" as the nickname for the whole AmigaOS (including Amiga DOS, Extras, etc.). This common consent ended with release of version 2.0 of AmigaOS , which re-introduced proper names to the installation floppies of AmigaDOS , Workbench, Extras, etc. Starting with Workbench 1.0, AmigaOS treated the Workbench as

1674-473: The Filer view from applications to perform saves. The opposite can perform a load. With their co-operation data can be copied or moved directly between applications by saving (dragging) to another application. Application directories are used to store applications. The OS differentiates them from normal directories through the use of a pling (exclamation mark, also called shriek) prefix. Double-clicking on such

1736-630: The GL2 Release 1 operating environment. Examples of the MEX user interface can be seen in a 1988 article in the journal "Computer Graphics", while earlier screenshots can not be found. The first commercial GUI-based systems, these did not find widespread use as to their (discounted) academic list price of $ 22,500 and $ 35,700 for the IRIS 1000 and IRIS 1400, respectively. However, these systems were commercially successful enough to start SGI's business as one of

1798-566: The Macintosh series. The Soviet Union Agat PC featured a graphical interface and a mouse device and was released in 1983. Founded 1982, SGI introduced the IRIS 1000 Series in 1983. The first graphical terminals (IRIS 1000) shipped in late 1983, and the corresponding workstation model (IRIS 1400) was released in mid-1984. The machines used an early version of the MEX windowing system on top of

1860-524: The Master Compact appeared to be Superior Software , who produced and specifically labelled their games as 'Master Compact' compatible. RISC OS / r ɪ s k oʊ ˈ ɛ s / is a series of graphical user interface -based computer operating systems (OSes) designed for ARM architecture systems. It takes its name from the RISC ( reduced instruction set computer ) architecture supported. The OS

1922-581: The OS being the first operating system to include such a feature, having included it since before January 1989. Since 1994, in RISC OS 3.5, it has been possible to use an outline anti-aliased font in the WindowManager for UI elements, rather than the bitmap system font from previous versions. Because most of the very early IBM PC and compatibles lacked any common true graphical capability (they used

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1984-644: The Workbench GUI. Later they could invoke it with the CLI/SHELL command "LoadWB" which loaded Workbench GUI. One major difference between other OS's of the time (and for some time after) was the Amiga's fully multi-tasking operating system , a powerful built-in animation system using a hardware blitter and copper and four channels of 26 kHz 8-bit sampled sound. This made the Amiga the first multi-media computer years before other OS's. Like most GUIs of

2046-632: The Workbench, sharing privileges with the GUI. The Amiga Workbench evolved over the 1990s, even after Commodore's 1994 bankruptcy. Acorn's 8-bit BBC Master Compact shipped with Acorn's first public GUI interface in 1986. Little commercial software, beyond that included on the Welcome disk, was ever made available for the system, despite the claim by Acorn at the time that "the major software houses have worked with Acorn to make over 100 titles available on compilation discs at launch". The most avid supporter of

2108-482: The average consumer , and suffered from poor marketing. In 1984, Apple Computer launched the Apple Macintosh , which was the first affordable and commercially successful personal computer to include a graphical user interface. The Macintosh was the second Apple Computer to ship with a graphical user interface, with the Apple Lisa being the first. In 1985, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows , which bore

2170-400: The basis for computer graphics and CAD/CAM". Very few programs can be called precedents for his achievements. Patrick J. Hanratty is sometimes called the "father of CAD/CAM" and wrote PRONTO, a numerical control language at General Electric in 1957, and wrote CAD software while working for General Motors beginning in 1961. Sutherland wrote in his thesis that Bolt, Beranek and Newman had

2232-405: The best known such graphical applications was Deluxe Paint , a popular painting software with a typical WIMP interface. The original Adobe Acrobat Reader executable file for MS-DOS was able to run on both the standard Windows 3.x GUI and the standard DOS command prompt. When it was launched from the command prompt, on a machine with a VGA graphics card, it provided its own GUI. Windows 1.0 ,

2294-622: The built-in MSX View of the Panasonic FS-A1GT was released as an add-on for the Panasonic FS-A1ST on disk instead of 512 KB ROM DISK. The Amiga computer was launched by Commodore in 1985 with a GUI called Workbench . Workbench was based on an internal engine developed mostly by RJ Mical , called Intuition , which drove all the input events. The first versions used a blue/orange/white/black default palette, which

2356-417: The context-sensitive menus, inapplicable menu choices can be 'greyed out' to make them unavailable. Menus have their own titles and may be moved around the desktop by the user. Any menu can have further sub-menus or a new window for complicated choices. The GUI is centered around the concept of files. The Filer displays the contents of a disc. Applications are run from the Filer view and files can be dragged to

2418-472: The day, Amiga's Intuition followed Xerox's, and sometimes Apple's, lead. But a CLI was included which dramatically extended the functionality of the platform. However, the CLI/Shell of Amiga is not just a simple text-based interface like in MS-DOS , but another graphic process driven by Intuition, and with the same gadgets included in Amiga's graphics.library. The CLI/Shell interface integrates itself with

2480-581: The design of personal computers during the late 1970s and early 1980s, notably the Three Rivers PERQ , the Apple Lisa and Macintosh , and the first Sun workstations. The modern WIMP GUI was first developed at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay , Larry Tesler , Dan Ingalls , David Smith , Clarence Ellis and a number of other researchers. This was introduced in the Smalltalk programming environment. It used windows , icons , and menus (including

2542-464: The early 1970s. In 1973, Xerox PARC developed the Alto personal computer. It had a bitmapped screen, and was the first computer to demonstrate the desktop metaphor and graphical user interface (GUI). It was not a commercial product, but several thousand units were built and were heavily used at PARC, as well as other XEROX offices, and at several universities for many years. The Alto greatly influenced

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2604-403: The first fixed drop-down menu) to support commands such as opening files, deleting files, moving files, etc. In 1974, work began at PARC on Gypsy, the first bitmap What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get ( WYSIWYG ) cut and paste editor. In 1975, Xerox engineers demonstrated a Graphical User Interface "including icons and the first use of pop-up menus". In 1981 Xerox introduced a pioneering product, Star ,

2666-465: The first systems with implementation of pop-up menus . The Blit , a graphics terminal, was developed at Bell Labs in 1982. Lisp machines originally developed at MIT and later commercialized by Symbolics and other manufacturers, were early high-end single user computer workstations with advanced graphical user interfaces, windowing, and mouse as an input device. First workstations from Symbolics came to market in 1981, with more advanced designs in

2728-488: The introduction of Windows 95 and Windows NT 32-bit based architecture in the 1990s. The main window of a given application can occupy the full screen in maximized status. The users must then to switch between maximized applications using the Alt+Tab keyboard shortcut; no alternative with the mouse except for de-maximize. When none of the running application windows are maximized, switching can be done by clicking on

2790-508: The main graphical workstation vendors. In later revisions of graphical workstations, SGI switched to the X window system , which had been developed starting at MIT since 1984 and which became the standard for UNIX workstations. VisiCorp 's Visi On was a GUI designed to run on DOS for IBM PCs. It was released in December 1983. Visi On had many features of a modern GUI, and included a few that did not become common until many years later. It

2852-533: The market with the withdrawal of the Atari ST line in 1992 and with the popularity of the Microsoft Windows 3.0 in the PC front around the same period of time. The Falcon030, released in 1993 was the last computer from Atari to use GEM. Tandy's DeskMate appeared in the early 1980s on its TRS-80 machines and was ported to its Tandy 1000 range in 1984. Like most PC GUIs of the time, it depended on

2914-417: The recently invented light pen , which relayed information on its position by computing at what time the light from the scanning cathode-ray tube screen is detected. To configure the initial position of the light pen, the word INK was displayed on the screen, which, upon tapping, initialised the program with a white cross to continue keeping track of the pen's movement relative to its prior position. Of

2976-479: The reported facts in the history of the PARC and Macintosh development are inaccurate, distorted or even fabricated, due to the lack of usage by historians of direct primary sources. In 1984, Apple released a television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh during the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII by CBS , with allusions to George Orwell 's noted novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four . The commercial

3038-429: The same philosophy. The IBM DOS Shell included with IBM DOS 5.0 (circa 1992) supported both text display modes and actual graphics display modes, making it both a TUI and a GUI, depending on the chosen mode. Advanced file managers for MS-DOS were able to redefine character shapes with EGA and better display adapters, giving some basic low resolution icons and graphical interface elements, including an arrow (instead of

3100-438: The stack). The Icon bar ( Dock ) holds icons which represent mounted disc drives, RAM discs, network directories, running applications, system utilities and docked: Files, Directories or inactive Applications. These icons and open windows have context-sensitive menus and support drag-and-drop behaviour. They represent the running application as a whole, irrespective of whether it has open windows. The application has control of

3162-649: The subsequent years. Beginning in 1979, started by Steve Jobs and led by Jef Raskin , the Apple Lisa and Macintosh teams at Apple Computer (which included former members of the Xerox PARC group) continued to develop such ideas. The Lisa, released in 1983, featured a high-resolution stationery-based (document-centric) graphical interface atop an advanced hard disk based OS that featured such things as preemptive multitasking and graphically oriented inter-process communication . The comparatively simplified Macintosh, released in 1984 and designed to be lower in cost,

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3224-486: Was aimed at making people think about computers, identifying the user-friendly interface as a personal computer which departed from previous business-oriented systems, and becoming a signature representation of Apple products. In 1986, the Apple II GS was launched with 16-bit CPU and significantly improved graphics and audio. It shipped with a new operating system, Apple GS/OS , with a Finder -like GUI similar to

3286-517: Was developed to work with existing CP/M and MS-DOS compatible operating systems on business computers such as IBM PC compatibles . It was developed from DRI software, known as GSX, designed by a former PARC employee. Its similarity to the Macintosh desktop led to a copyright lawsuit from Apple Computer , and a settlement which involved some changes to GEM. This was to be the first of a series of " look and feel " lawsuits related to GUI design in

3348-528: Was fully mouse-driven, used a bit-mapped display for both text and graphics, included on-line help, and allowed the user to open a number of programs at once, each in its own window, and switch between them to multitask. Visi On did not, however, include a graphical file manager. Visi On also demanded a hard drive in order to implement its virtual memory system used for "fast switching", at a time when hard drives were very expensive. Digital Research (DRI) created GEM as an add-on program for personal computers. GEM

3410-465: Was implemented, and was capable of displaying on an Imlac PDS-1 . The Xerox Alto greatly improved upon this system by adding the capability to display bitmapped images, buttons, and other graphics in these windows, as opposed to the DNLS's overlapping DAs which could only display strings of text. Engelbart's work directly led to the advances at Xerox PARC . Several people went from SRI to Xerox PARC in

3472-417: Was inspired by the DNLS (Display NLS)'s overlapping multi-windowing system, which was operational by early 1973 and used at several ARPA locations. In the DNLS, overlapping windows were referred to as "display areas", or DAs, and could store multiple lines of strings. In 1971, the screen could only be split into two display areas, vertically or horizontally; by early 1973, the full overlapping windowing system

3534-728: Was originally developed by Acorn Computers for use with their 1987 range of Archimedes personal computers using the Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) processors. It comprises a command-line interface and desktop environment with a windowing system . Originally branded as the Arthur 1.20 the subsequent Arthur 2 release was shipped under the name RISC OS 2. The WIMP interface incorporates three mouse buttons (named Select , Menu and Adjust ), context-sensitive menus, window stack control (i.e. send to back) and dynamic window focus (a window can have input focus at any position on

3596-688: Was part and parcel of Sutherland's Ph.D. thesis at MIT and peripherally related to the Computer-Aided Design project at that time. Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System . History of the graphical user interface The history of the graphical user interface , understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer , covers a five-decade span of incremental refinements, built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code , but with basic elements in common that define

3658-472: Was selected for high contrast on televisions and composite monitors . Workbench presented directories as drawers to fit in with the " workbench " theme. Intuition was the widget and graphics library that made the GUI work. It was driven by user events through the mouse, keyboard, and other input devices. Due to a mistake made by the Commodore sales department, the first floppies of AmigaOS (released with

3720-405: Was the first commercially successful product to use a multi-panel window interface. A desktop metaphor was used, in which files looked like pieces of paper, file directories looked like file folders, there were a set of desk accessories like a calculator, notepad, and alarm clock that the user could place around the screen as desired, and the user could delete files and folders by dragging them to

3782-527: Was the first program to bring multitasking and windowing capabilities to a DOS environment in which existing DOS programs could be used. DESQview was not a true GUI but offered certain components of one, such as resizable, overlapping windows and mouse pointing. Before the MS-Windows age, and with the lack of a true common GUI under MS-DOS, most graphical applications which worked with EGA , VGA and better graphic cards had proprietary built-in GUIs. One of

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3844-529: Was to have master drawings which can be instantiated into many duplicates. When a master drawing is changed, then all instances change also. Geometric constraints was another major invention in Sketchpad, letting a user easily constrain geometric properties in the drawing: for instance, the length of a line or the angle between two lines could be fixed. As a trade magazine said, clearly Sutherland "broke new ground in 3D computer modeling and visual simulation,

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