A Non-Dogmatic History of the GUI

Zoxed writes "Jeremy Reimer provides an 8-page history of GUIs from the early 1930s to the present day. For example, from the conclusion: 'the truth of the story is that the GUI was developed by many different people over a long period of time. Saying that "Apple invented the GUI" or "Apple ripped off the idea from PARC" is overly simplistic, but saying that "Xerox invented the GUI" is equally so.'"

Comments

Love of the Mouse

[Janitha]

After reading this, I noticed one thing, seems like the idea has been stuck into the same idea this whole time, a simple 2d screen. Even vr googles use two 2d screens. Hopefully this will change more as the development of layered LCD's and other technologies start comming up. True 3d gui's are what I am waiting for now.

Re:Love of the Mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, what would all these 3D gui's be suitable for? [..] I never felt the need for either a 3D pointing device or display. Can you give some more examples of applications where such devices would have an added value?

One thing that stuck in my head from my CS course in user interfaces was that (paraphrasing and condensing), "3D interfaces suck".

A major problem is that in a 2D interface, everything is visible (*); in a 3D interface, things can be 'hidden' behind other things, or even 'inside' a group of other things. At least you'll have to move around to see items; in the latter case, you'll actually have to move some items themselves aside to see other items.

Also; bear in mind that 3D interfaces will always be observed via two 2D projections (in your eyes, of course); this does *not* give anything approaching full knowledge of the 3D world from a given perspective. 2D on the other hand, does not have this problem.

On the course mentioned above, we were shown a video from the early 90s (this was circa 2001/02), with a virtual reality file management system. Navigation was via a hierarchy of logically-organized rooms in a building; files were finally found within boxes and folders.

Even then, it seemed vary dated in an "early 1990s virtual reality fetishising" way. In short, with the benefit of hindsight (*or* the ability to step back from the hype), it is obvious that the system was gimmicky and inefficient compared to the still-prevelant Mac/Windows-style folder navigation.

If technology was the limiting factor on 3D interfaces, I believe they'd have become commonplace by the second half of the 1990s. The fact that they aren't says more about the mechanics and usability of them than it does about display technology.

(*) Yeah. Things *can* be hidden by other things in most current GUIs. That's because they offer a very restricted level of 3D; namely layers of depth. They get away with this *because* it's limited.

A Slashdot History of The GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

...As taken place in IRC

maoepdmz: apple invent gui, m$ stealz it
CHRIS: FAG STFU... XEROX MADE FIRST gui
maoepdmz: no
jay: microsoft made the gui truly successful
CHRIS: WTF
maoepdmz: STFU JAY FAGG0t
*** jay has been kicked (Suck Bill's cock)
CHRIS: MY DAD WORKS FOR APPLE, HE WAS THERE WHEN THEY MADE THE GUI FOR LISA AND STEVE JOBS CREATED THE MOUSE
maoepdmz: raelly?
CHRIS: YEAH
maoepdmz: so xerox are liars
CHRIS: HELLS YEAH THEY TOTALLY RIPPED IT FROM APPLES
maoepdmz: wow
gorbulon_neo_matrix21: u all fags, linux had the first gui in 1983... its called x windows system, idiots
CHRIS: NO, UNIX MADE THAT
maoepdmz: chris do u have unix
CHRIS: YES.. ITS L33t
maoepdmz: can i see screenshot?
CHRIS: NO

And yet even this is simplified a good bit

[mcc]

They go directly from Smalltalk/PARC to Apple/LISA as if nothing happened in between. There actually were a decent number of GUI/windowing systems in the late 70s / early 80s, and a number of pre-X attempts at making a UNIX GUI, that time has totally forgotten. PERQ is the only one I can seem to find evidence of the existence of on Google offhand. If you can somehow find a copy of the book containing this history of GUIs written in 1986, it's rather fascinating...

Oh shit

[boomgopher]

Don't show the Gnome devs this:

Alto File Manager

it might end up being the next version of Nautilus...

A link is worth a thousand pictures.

[Anonymous Coward]

GUI screenshots.
http://www.aci.com.pl/mwichary/guidebook/interface s

Englebart's famous 1968 demo.
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html

Acorn Archimedes GUI
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~lrtc/computers/acorn_ro/ acorn/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A225785

Knowledge Navigator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_navigator

Apple II GS
http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/computers/IIg s.html

BeBox
http://www.bebox.nu/history.php

8-1/2: The Plan 9 Window system
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/8%BD/8%BD.pdf

Genera
http://www.geocities.com/mparker762/toys.html

Video Interviews of Early Pioneers
http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/

GUI News
http://interfacelift.com/news/

ZUI's
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo/applications/in dex.shtml

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Re:Apple bought it from PARC

[As Seen On VT]

Once we'd bought the GUI from PARC and started to develop it, loads of Xerox engineers started to jump ship and move to Apple - we were where the action was at. This was a hard time for most of us old timers, the PARC engineers were smelly, had facial hair and a tendency to work naked (a very confronting sight).

Acceptance of the new engineers did slowly grow though. I remember the turning point was when in a weekly meeting where we showed off the latest advances in ASCII porn - a vital part of Apple's plan to get computers into every bedroom - the PARC guys demoed a system of multiple 'windows' containing 4-bit Grayscale photorealistic porn!

It took a minute to get over the fact that they had used themselves as models, but Steve immediately saw the potential and that won us over they quickly.