History of the GUI1984 to the present day

History of computingClick icon to add pictureOriginally a deck of punch cards

had to be submitted and batch processed in order to run a computer programme

It was akin to marking your choice of horses with a pencil at the TAB

You would then receive a crude ink jet print out

Used from 1886 – 1990’s

Magnetic Tape Made long term storage of

vast amounts of data possible

Prone to breakage

One tape could store 1Tb

Used from 1951 to present

First User Interface

Douglas Englebart demonstrated first interface in 1968)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xptc6f3Daoo#t=0

This was the first time a “mouse” had been used

Palo Alto Reseach Centre (PARC)

Xerox feared the demise of paper so formed PARC to work on their dream projects

They invented Laser printing but had no way to control it, so they developed the Xerox Alto

The screen was shaped like paper and unlike other fixed character displays, each pixel could be turned on and off independently

Zerox Star The advent of Object Oriented

programming language in Xerox’s small talk allowed the development of a Windows like environment

Windows could be stacked on top of each other. Icons made their emergence

Scroll bars, dialogue boxes and radio buttons appeared

The First Alto document processor cost $17,000

Apple Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

began in their garage

The ideas from PARC were brought across along with technicians who wished to see the Xerox ideas turned commercial

Their icon based interface called “Lisa” would eventually do away with command type lines

Windows Bill Gates orginally worked as a 3rd party developer for Apple

His early versions of Windows 1 and 2 were clunky and had to compete with many other GUI developers – Commodore, Atari, Acorn

By the 1990’s with version 3 of Windows, only Windows and Apple were left in the GUI wars

Windows 95 then broke the all time sales record when released

Windows

Mac OSX and Aqua Aqua introduced the idea of a GUI where every window was double-

buffered in memory, so that any redraws happen off-screen and aren't visible

Introduced the stretching and squeezing of windows into a dock

Introduced Expose where windows would shrink so all open ones can be fitted onto a screen at the same time.

Mac OSX and Aqua

For further information http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/operating-system-interface-d

esign-between-1981-2009/

The mobile revolution GUI design got more interesting with the evolution of the mobile interface

Other developers came on-board, namely Google with their Android interface

Apple was the first with iOS and the iPhone dominating the market early on

iOS – A Visual History – (see below)

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/13/2612736/ios-history-iphone-ipad.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/

The rise of Android

Android new design guidelines New Materials Google Android interface – see the Design guidelines

http://www.google.com/design/

And further examples

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.esites.ecal&hl=en_GB