GUI

History

In the early eighties the IBM PC running DOS became the runaway best seller among computers. DOS was a cryptic command line interface, a direct descendant of mainframes. The PC had many limitations, including memory access, power, and lack of color or graphic standards; but it had enough productivity to warrant purchases of millions of units.

At the same time, a small group of designers at a company called Apple Computer made a deal with Xerox PARC. In exchange for Apple stock, Xerox would allow Apple to tour the PARC facility and incorporate some of their research into future products. Apple took elements of the Star interface, refined them and produced the Lisa computer. The Lisa failed, owing to its cost, lack of software availability, and other factors. Apple's next try with an enhanced and friendlier Lisa interface was the Macintosh, which found a small market foothold in the design and publishing markets. Apple was committed to its GUI, spending millions of dollars over the next ten years to research and implement enhancements; their commitment paid off in the late eighties as the desktop publishing market exploded and Apple's interface was widely acclaimed by the artists, writers, and publishers using the computers. Interestingly, one of the most successful Macintosh application developers was the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington, owner of MS-DOS. Microsoft, following the Apple GUI standards, developed a spreadsheet for the Mac which set new standards for ease of use. This product was, of course, Excel.

Apple worked with artists, psychologists, teachers, and users to craft revisions to their software and developer guidelines. For example, in California they sponsored an elementary school where every student had an Apple Computer. Each year the teachers and Apple programmers spent the summer planning new lessons and making enhancements to the software used to teach them, because Apple believed that children give the truest reactions to basic interface issues. Although a distant second in number of systems behind IBM compatibles today, Apple's closed hardware and software implementation at one point made them the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, eclipsing IBM in 1992. Apple believes that the principal contributor to their success has been the consistent implementation of user interfaces across applications. Macintosh users have been able to easily master multiple applications because commands and behavior were the same across applications: Command-S is always save.

In the late 1980s Microsoft Corporation, producer of DOS, DOS applications, and Macintosh applications, began a joint project with IBM to develop a new graphic user interface for IBM compatible computers. This partnership later dissolved, but Microsoft went on to take user interface lessons learned from their successful Macintosh products, Excel and Word, and created a series of graphic shells running on top of DOS which could mimic many of the Macintosh features. Microsoft and Apple became involved in extensive litigation over ownership of many of these features, but the case was eventually dismissed. Later version of the Windows operating system became increasingly Macintosh-like. Today Microsoft gives little credit to Apple for pioneering and validating many of the ideas which they have copied.

With increasing desktop power and continued reductions in CPU pricing, another area of GUI development also entered business, that of UNIX. Like DOS, UNIX is a child of the seventies and inherits a powerful and obscure command line interface from mainframes; unlike DOS, it had been used in networked applications and high-end engineering workstations for most of its life. In the eighties UNIX GUI shells were developed by consortiums of workstation manufacturers to make the systems easier to use. The principal GUIs were Solaris (Sun Microsystems), Motif (Open Software Foundation, or OSF), and later NeXTstep (Next Computers).

The HTML/browser interface comes in bewildering variety of implementations. With limited interaction in forms the designers were forced back to basics, building and testing iterations. Fortunately, HTML is relatively easy to create, though some would suggest, difficult to master. Newer versions of HTML and decendants like DHTML, XML, WML, SMIL, offer greater potential for true interactive experiences but at the cost of increased download times and questionable compatibility with a diverse legacy of installed browsers. Over time the legacy browser problem will be solved as users upgrade their systems, and bandwidth issues should also improve. But the important thing learned by GUI designers from the Web is that screens do not have to be complicated to be useful - if the form solves a need and is easy to use, then people will use it.

LINUX represents another trend in computing and GUIs, that of group-developed software based on components. Facilitated by the Web, software designers can collaborate and produce startling work in short timeframes. LINUX is small and reliable, yet supports a large base of usable processes. Along with Java, LINUX represents a possible future of portable software running on compatible systems anytime, anywhere.

© 2003 helevorn