History of the GUI

The Early Days

The concept of a window system first introduced by SAGE

project and Sutherland’s Sketchpad

SAGE Project

•SAGE stands for Semi-Automatic Ground Environment

•Used by NORAD from the late 50s to 80s

•Tracked and intercepted enemy bombers

•The computers that ran it were immense

55,000 vacuum tubes

1/2-acre of floor space

275 tons

and each SAGE site had two of them

Sketchpad

•Developed in 1963 for Ivan Sutherland’s doctoral dissertation

•Ancestor to modern CAD systems

•First app with a graphical user interface

•Used light pen to control onscreen elements

oN-Line System (NLS)

•Englebart was influenced by the Sketchpad project

•NLS was the first use of a computer mouse

Xerox PARC

•PARC - Palo Alto Research Center

•Under Merzouga Wilberts, codified the WIMP paradigm

•WIMP - Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers

•Resulted in the Xerox Alto experimental computer, later released as Xerox Star

GUIs Go Mainstream

Lisa•Developed by Apple in the late

70s and early 80s

•Not commercially successful

•The graphics taxed the system’s 5MHz processor, so it felt very sluggish

•More advanced system than Macintosh at the time

Macintosh•Developed alongside Lisa at Apple in the

late 70s and early 80s.

•Released in 1984

•First commercially successful product with a GUI

•Continued to expand on WIMP ideas

•Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)

The HIG

•Huge, detailed document

•Described how applications on Macintosh platform should behave

•Very important because Mac was the first commercially viable GUI

•Apple wanted to ensure developers “got it”

Macintosh (cont.)•Drop down menus

•Trash can to delete files

•Files looked like paper documents

•Directories looked like file folders

•Extensively modeled on work at PARC, but extended the work at PARC considerably

Apple IIGS

•Released in 1986

•First Apple II to feature a GUI

•GS/OS modeled on Macintosh OS

•Included color, not to appear on a Mac until the Mac II a year later

GEM

•Circa 1985

•GUI that sat over the top of MS-DOS, Dr. DOS, CP/M, etc.

•Sued by Apple over the similarities to Macintosh

•Default UI on the Atari ST computer

GEM on an Atari ST

Commodore Amiga

•Launched by Commodore in 1985

•Desktop environment called “Workbench”

•Featured some very advanced graphic capabilities

•Adopted extensively by video editors because of Video Toaster

Amiga OS

MS-DOS-based GUIs

•Though there was no GUI in MS-DOS there were a number of applications with GUIs

•Most well-known example is Deluxe Paint

Deluxe Paint

Microsoft Windows

•First two versions of Windows were not commercially successful

•Windows 3.0 took off

•Windows 3.0 was based on Common User Access

•CUA gave Windows consistency

Common User Access

•Developed by IBM

•Strict rules about how apps should look and behave

•Developed in response to chaotic UIs on IBM platform

•Modeled around Apple Human Interface Guidelines

Prior to CUA...

•Opening a file:

•Wordperfect: F7 then 3

•Lotus 1-2-3: / then W then R

•MS Word: Esc then T then L

•Wordstar: Ctrl+K+O

•emacs: Ctrl+X then Ctrl+F

GEOS

•Originally ran on Commodore 64 hardware

•Ported to Apple II and IBM PC

•8-bit in a 16-bit world

•Never really took off

•Included gadgets and a word processor

X Window System

•Referred to as X11 in most circles

•Standard GUI system on Unix platform

•Developed to be client-server

•Allows you to run graphical applications on other machines over the network

•Still in use today

Windows 95/NT4

•32-bit, can address up to 4GB of memory

•Better multitasking

•New “Cairo” user interface

•Very successful

•Followed up with Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP and now Vista

Mac OS X

•New GUI called Aqua

•Better multitasking

•Based on NeXT OS OpenStep

•Raised the bar on graphical embellishment of the interface

•Included a true CLI

Rest of Class

•Continue working on your Term Paper subjects

•I’ll meet with each of you individually to talk about them and finalize the subject