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GUI Revolutions: From Flashing Bulbs To Windows 8
StormDriver writes "GUI has been with us for years and it went a long, long way since the early days. There were some fairly interesting developments along the way, so we took the time to line them up for you."
Is that reality is never as good as possibility, because any idea will end up being moulded for the personal gain of a particular business or government. Whether it's lock-in on the desktop or sending your information off to the cloud, we'll never see a decent peer-to-peer collaborative system as long as humans are designing, building, deploying and maintaining it.
This article doesn't scratch the surface, and looks more like an advertisement for Windows 7 and 8.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100101033213/http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
There's history for ya.
Wayback Machine mirror so as to not nuke the poor guy's site.
--
BMO
I don't see mobile GUI's in there. Surely Palm's early offerings qualify as a "before" and iOS & Android as an "after" ... and Magic Cap as in "in between". Desktops aren't the only place we use GUI's.
"Douglas Englebart was a true visionary. On a single conference on Deceber 9, 1968, he performed a live demonstration that showed working prototypes of a computer mouse, hypertext, email, word processor, and collaborative real-time editor." However, you will note the lack of a working spellcheck. Or else Deceber is a month that only existed in the 60's.
Our brain is well suited to work with visual clues, and computers soon learned to use that.
What will computers think up next?
In future, all screens will be touchscreen, even your main PC monitor. The major breakthrough was the self-lubricating touchscreen. It's naturally oily, and hypo-allergenic, requiring no cleaning.
Of course, the mouse driven paradigm needed to be scrapped completely, in favour of a adult finger-painting gesture system. Mod someone down on slashdot? There's a gesture for that. There's an intuitive gesture for absolutely everything. Just install the gesture localization pack.
True, I can't find any of my LOCAL applications any more, but that's fine because I can just google for them, and they'll turn up some place.
It's going to be a good future.
That's almost hysterical. If anything, windows 3.1 was revolutionary but that's only in the Microsoft context.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Don't forget gutsy
which is totally what she said
Oh, so it looks like we went from blinkenlights to terminals to Windows without stopping, and any form of interface other than that is either irrelevant or obsolete. I guess they actually consider it the end-all and be-all.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
Vi rules, eh?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Task switching without hint as to how much further to the task you are actually looking for, only allowing non-overlapping windows. It's essentially Windows 1.0 on those fronts.
Microsoft saw iPhone acheieve apparent success making a giant phone, and MS wants every desktop to be that way. Further making things worse, they are ignoring the market reality and declaring WP7 the most awesome interface for phones and giant phones.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Am I the only person who would actually prefer the Windows 3.1 interface to still be around today? No more "close next to maximise", a nice "desktop" that you can organise how you like, and in subfolders, without things popping up at random places on the screen, and no Start Menu / Taskbar / Quick Launch horror, and everything taking precisely as much effort to draw as absolutely necessary (no gradient title bars, horrid skins, etc.).
There was something sweet, simple, endearing and DAMN FAST about the 3.1 shell that I haven't found anywhere since. It flew even on 200MHz machines.
Try "from flashing bulbs to iOS", or "from flashing bulbs to Android". If you're searching for the modern pinnicle of GUI evolution, the desktop GUI ain't it (especially windows, released or unreleased). The desktop GUI was perfected 10 years ago, and nearly every "improvement" since then has been driven by the developer's vision rather than the user's need.
Because I can't wait to get fingerprints all over my monitor. . .
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
An article supposed to present a huge history of GUI development, which has "Windows 8" in the title a few days after it was demoed for the first time? Sounds like the article will be something thrown hastily together to jump on the "hype" bandwagon rather than an insightful article about history...
A good Slashdot article would be the history of the title of this article and who got paid to create and spread it.
"Am I the only person who would actually prefer the Windows 3.1 .. a nice "desktop" that you can organise how you like .. without things popping up at random places on the screen"
A combination of Novell Netware and Xtree done for me or even Midnight Commander
Vi rules, eh?
vi has nothing on ed.
user@host:~$ ed
?
^C
?
quit
?
q
user@host:~$
Now there's a real man's editor.
kmem russian roulette: Aquillar> dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/kmem bs=1 count=1 seek=$RANDOM
It depends on what you're doing, really. For a lot of tasks, I actually find a GUI to be well suited.
However, I've also copied files from a Windows machine to a UNIX machine as recently as last week so I could do a little command line grep/cut/sed magic on them and produce something else. For cajoling text into a new form, a command line is still the best thing ever. Same goes for anything that wants to be automated (provided they gave you commands for it to be scripted).
A GUI has its place, but it can't fully replace a command line. I like having the option for both
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Pardon me. I didn't realize I was on your lawn ...
1936
Konrad Zuse - Z1 Computer First freely programmable computer.
Maybe it was a month in the calendar invented for the GUI Revolution but the old calendar was put back in effect when Bill Gates took over.
I've used Sharepoint at work and don't see the attraction. It was hard to use and impossible to maintain a dynamic document store like MediaWiki. You have to check out the document, open it in Word, make changes, save the document to a known location, exit Word, then check it back in vs clicking Edit in MediaWiki, making your changes and saving it.
I do have managers doing interesting stuff with it, embedding statistical spreadsheets and creating graphs but those things aren't things I do on a day to day basis as a Unix Admin. I need to be able to quickly find a document and then make changes if needed.
Last I heard, there was some problem with our SharePoint back end server that was preventing the upgrade to the new version which has a wiki as part of the tool. In the mean time, other departments have deployed MediaWiki and are documenting their processes and procedures on the fly. They're finding it so much easier that they're migrating the documents off of SharePoint and to the wiki.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
even if it is an article regarding the evolution of the windows gui, truncating the gui history from engelbart and parc to the original mac os, and then switching to the history of the windows gui is pure horseshit.
windows is what it is today due to the development across many windowing and gui efforts.
microsoft has (often blatantly) borrowed gui metaphors from many of its contemporaries thru several iterations of windows including:
motif(cde) - expand/minimize/destroy window
openlook - WIMP metaphor
aqua - transparency effects, alpha blending
compiz - compositing
so on and so forth...
i'm not criticizing microsoft's efforts, but the skew of the article give the impression that windows 8 is where it's to due the sole development efforts microsoft, disregarding other community efforts. the author get's an "F" for failing to perform minor research on wikipedia for a history of gui's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUI
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
... but wow, what a fanboyish piece of shit. There is nearly no mention of Apple after its origin.
Leading into Windows 1 (after talking about Xerox, the Lisa, and the first Mac) he says "The era of GUI's was about to start. But apple [sic] was not meant to be the king."
Oh really?
- Vista copied many features straight out of Tiger
- I think we can all agree that WP7 would not look like it does if the iPhone had never been on the scene
- And now, after ten years of making poorly-selling tablets, Apple has shown how it should be done and MS is falling over themselves trying to catch up
I'm not saying Apple has never copied anything either, but once the article hits Windows 1.0, it is all about MS. He goes from Windows 3 to Microsoft Bob, lays down exactly 10 words about Windows 95, then goes straight to XP, Vista, and 7. He dismisses over two decades of Mac OS with the words "In the meantime, Mac OS was undergoing a similar, slow evolution."
He then says "Last couple of years were really eventful. New families of computing devices became wildly popular -- smartphones, netbooks, tablets. Mobile operating systems became almost as complex and capable as desktop ones. Multi touch technologies challenged the age-old interface design, and required new approaches. And now Microsoft tells us the future belongs to tiles." and the rest of the article is about Windows 8 and tiles. REALLY? No mention at all of the iPhone, who was the first to market with multitouch, even if they didn't invent it? No mention of Palm, or WinCE or BeOS or the Amiga or a million other omissions? Come on. If he isn't a shill, he's got a BIG set of blinders on. If you want to see the history of GUIs, go here. They have a ridiculously thorough collection of screenshots.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sad, a straight shot to Windows 8 - Xerox had the idea, Apple Copied it, MS copied it and then MS developed it into Windows 8 - without copying any thing else... really?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
"GUI Revolutions: From Windows 8 to Flashing Bulbs" - there, fixed it for y'all :)
What Bigbutt says about an his companies upgrade to 2010 sounds about right. We're currently testing SharePoint 2010. While the backend architecture is actually much better than in 2007, there is still a lot of Beta quality code in the software. We've actually stopped testing on 2010 until SP1 comes out, hoping it's better.
I hate the Windows centric half I my job. I love the Linux half. The sooner I can dump this SharePoint Turd on someone else (as it was dumped on me) the better.
FTFA:
Please. Real men still use the command line. That's how I browse Slashdot!
I think it's time for a hybrid next-generation command line/gui system. There's a little crossover already with x-term windows, mouse actions in terminals, "screen" and a few other things but a comprehensive top-down approach might yield real dividends.
And no language comes close to matching the elegant simplicity of ACL.
ACL as in
or some other expansion?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Abacus? There's an app for that.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"GUI operations are essentially impossible to script. With large numbers of servers, it is impractical to use the GUI to carry out installation tasks or regular maintenance tasks."
- David Brooks, Microsoft
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
The article re-hashes the obvious.
There's a whole history of early graphical user interfaces from the pre-computer and early computer era.
One of the neater ones was the Panama Canal lock control boards, built by General Electric in 1913. This was a long desk with a symbolic model of the locks. The water level in each lock is represented by the tall indicators. The lock gate positions are represented by aluminum pointers. The protective chain lifted into position to protect the first lock gates from a runaway ship was represented by a little metal chain. The locks themselves are represented by a long strip of blue-grey stone. (The first GUI theme!) The valves are controlled by water faucets, and the gates by handles.
All this is interlocked mechanically, so, for example, that the lock gates can't be opened unless the water levels are equal on both sides. The handles will physically not turn. That technology was borrowed from railroad signalling.
Another system of historical interest is General Railway Signal's NX interlocking system., from 1936. This is the very beginning of "user-friendly" GUIs. Previously, interlocked systems in railroad signalling, and the Panama Canal system, just prevented the operator from doing prohibited operations. NX was the first system which showed the operator all the currently valid options, let the user select one, and took care of the details of making it happen. It's well worked out. The operator selects the entrance point where a train is entering the interlocking. The system figures out all the currently valid exit points, taking into account other trains currently present, conflicting routes, etc., and lights up illuminated buttons on the track diagram for each currently allowed exit point. The operator then selects one exit point. The system then moves all the track switches as necessary, waits until they're set and locked in the correct position, then sets the signals along the route to clear. As the train passes through the interlocking, the signals change to "stop" behind it, and the track sections and switches are automatically freed up for other trains. At all times, there's at least one stopping distance of red-signaled track between any two trains, and any switch in a green-signaled section cannot be moved until the train clears it. The New York City subway system still uses this technology, along with mechanical train stop devices at every signal which, if up, will hit an air valve on each subway car and stop the train. There's a simulator if you're interested.
It's worth understanding the big display-board systems of the past. Many of them had better human interfaces than modern systems.
FTA:
Also, the ARM compatibility is a double edge knife â" sure, Windows 8 will run on more machines, including mobile devices. But the applications themselves wonâ(TM)t be interchangeable, software written for ARM wonâ(TM)t work on your PC. Whatâ(TM)s the point in calling it one system, when effectively you will have two systems, each with a separate set of compatible apps?
True on one hand (apps like Office), but not true on another. The statement was made that apps that run entirely on the new desktop with the new Windows 8 facilities can be written entirely in HTML5 and JavaScript. As such, desktop widgets and even more sophisticated apps and games can be written once, and run across both platforms. In fact, I think that's precisly why MS made such a big deal about emphasizing that much of what you're seeing in the new shell is HTML5 and JavaScript.
I'm assuming that .Net is still supported as well, adn even that can compile to IL, which can then be run on each platform, compiling down to native code at either install or run time.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Windows 1 had xclock?
Really? I find editing raster images and viewing them from a command line to be rather shitty, but maybe you use a different editor than I?
Perhaps you have matrix like skills so just reading hex allows you to visualize the image, I do not however, so I tend to stick with using pretty GUI editors.
I'll be happy to bet a years pay that I can come up with at least 50 tasks that you simply can not under any circumstances do better at a command prompt than I can do at a GUI.
Like wise, I could do the same for the command prompt versus the GUI.
They both have their place. Only an idiot would use a screwdriver to hammer in a nail when he has a perfectly good working hammer right there to use, which is pretty much what you've said you do.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Perhaps someone should buy him a Mac and show him AppleScript.
Are there any native Mac OSX apps that aren't scriptable? I don't even know how you could make them unscriptable, its kind of built into ... well, everything in OSX.
You don't have to do anything to make your app scriptable, though you can make it easier to script for by making helpers and such, but out of the box your apps are scriptable because the core runtime libraries are scriptable.
Maybe he should take a look in his own company at VBA, which requires the app know about and support it, but they certainly do make their apps scriptable ... sort of, in a bad halfassed way.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Slashcode is utterly abominable. Every revision, they not only make the place uglier, they introduce new bugs as well. The last redesign appears to have totally borked utf input.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Thank you. No mention of the stuff they did well in OS/2 (I still think it was one of the better desktops from a functionality perspective, if somewhat uninspired graphically), or even all the fun stuff we've had in Linux. KDE, Gnome, the beautiful eye candy offered with Enlightenment (my personal favourite) - what about that?
MS wasn't able to multitask on a box until Citrix showed them how to do it (and it's still a mess), whereas the separation between GUI and platform between any Unix/Linux/BSD version made that a snap.
All MS has contributed is the weight to blunt-force people down one route and unify some approach to the desktop (probably invented by someone else). But its main innovation has been to be capable of selling stuff that completely *broke* usability.
That only came apart with Vista which was so blatantly broken that even the magazines who took advertising money could no longer afford to praise it..
Insert
What does Windows 8 have to do with the evolution of the GUI? It looks like an irrelevant, cumbersome side-branch to me.
Commando in MPW put a GUI on commands, sort of.. letting you create the CLI command with the GUI. Mostly more of a pain than it was worth, but useful the first couple of times you used a new command perhaps...
Also, I think something like OpenDoc is(/was) the closest thing to the CLI concept in the GUI world -- lots of little programs that interact with each other. It's a shame that none of the component-based systems have become popular/are still around. If I could take a GUI program that I like all but one section of, and easily just plug in a new section for one part, that would be great. Yes, you can claim that open source allows this, and it does.. but if the various sections of a program were really component-based, I would only have to muck with the part I cared about, and the rest would continue to just work..
I purchasd a keyboard with about 10 extra function keys at the top, beyond what you normally see on a standard keyboard, and with those extra keys programmed as I wish, I can do exactly what scrolling through launchers does for me. Hot keys are the way to go.
With the new layouts containing a list of all GUI applications, I have to constantly scroll them in order to locate an application launcher. Not everything I do fits on the "quick launcher" pad. I want to use my data to drive and start the gui application, and not the reverse. In this regard, there is something wrong with both Ubuntu's natty and Gnome3s paradigm. Both interfaces went away from the data to address application launchers. Wow, how painful it is and time wasting to use these two new interfaces.
You could argue that the next version will allow me to change the sequence of the icons(launchers) on the display. Will it allow me to change the type of data shown? If I want my display to be a folder object, containing a series of documents, will I be able to have that option, the option to not show hundreds of application launchers, but only my important folders.
Heresy, we will return our backs to the current approach and look to using the folder as a desktop-- a desktop that contains my data and my application launchers. My ideal GUI display will have object oriented globs, with each glob containing my data and my methods. That is what I would happily accept.
Last, comment. Eventually, ARM, Intel AMD, Motorolla and the world will all be booting a common virtual machine application. That VM will run a global operating system (Perhaps it will be like java) that will allow "write once", "use anywhere" to take place. There will be no need to purchase multiple versions of the same application. I also believe that eventually chipmakers will provide processors capable of having the majority of their instruction sets read-in after booting from a mini-bios. This to my mind would open the door to the virtual machine I envisage.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada