computer

The graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, has over the last four decades a steady history of incremental refinements built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code but sharing the same basic elements that define the WIMP paradigm. There have been important technological achievements and enhancements to the general interaction were given in small steps over previous systems and there have been a few significant breakthroughs in terms of use, but the same organizational metaphors and interaction idioms are still in use. Although many GUI Operating Systems are operated by using a mouse, the keyboard can also be used by using keyboard shortcuts or arrow keysEarly dynamic information devices such as radar displays, where input devices were used for direct control of computer-created data, set the basis for later improvements of graphical interfaces.^[1]

The concept of a windowing system was introduced by the first real-time graphic display systems for computers: the SAGE Project and Ivan Sutherland's SketchpadDoug Engelbart's Augmentation of Human Intellect project at SRI in the 1960s developed the On-Line System (NLS), which incorporated a mouse-driven cursor and multiple windows used to work on hypertext. Engelbart had been inspired, in part, by the memex desk based information machine suggested by Vannevar Bush in 1945. Much of learn early research was based on how children Beginning in 1979, started by Steve Jobs and led by Jef Raskin, the Lisa and Macintosh teams at Apple Computer (which included former members of the Xerox PARC group) continued to develop such ideas. The Macintosh, released in 1984, was the first commercially successful product to use a GUI. A desktop metaphor was used, in which files looked like pieces of paper; directories looked like file folders; there were a set of desk accessories like a calculator, notepad, and alarm clock that the user could place around the screen as desired; and the user could delete files and folders by dragging them to a trash can on the screen. Drop down menus were also introduced.

There is still some controversy over the amount of influence that Xerox's PARC work, as opposed to previous academic research, had on the GUIs of Apple's Lisa and Macintosh, but it is clear that the influence was extensive, because first versions of Lisa GUIs even lacked icons. These prototype GUIs are at least mouse driven, but completely ignored the WIMP concept. Rare screenshots of first GUIs of Apple Lisa prototypes are shown here. Note also that Apple was invited by PARC to view their research, and a number of PARC employees subsequently moved to Apple to work on the Lisa and Macintosh GUI. However, the Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding manipulatable icons, a fixed drop-down menu bar and drag&drop manipulation of objects in the file system (see Macintosh Finder) for example. A list of the improvements made by Apple to the PARC interface can be read here (folklore.org) It's hard to say which particular features were originated in which project, though. Jef Raskin warns that many of the reported facts in the history of the PARC and Macintosh development are inaccurate, distorted or even fabricated, due to the lack of usage by historians of direct primary sources.^{[4After Windows 3.11, Microsoft began to develop a new consumer-oriented version of the operating system. Windows 95 was intended to integrate Microsoft's formerly separate MS-DOS and Windows products and includes an enhanced version of DOS, often referred to as MS-DOS 7.0, although many people believe that Windows 95's MS-Dos was not really DOS at all. It also featured a significant redesign of the GUI, dubbed "Cairo", which was eventually used in Windows NT 4.0. Both Win95 and WinNT were 32-bit based technologies, which could exploit the abilities of the Intel 80386 CPU, as the preemptive multitasking and up to 4GiB of linear address memory space. In the marketplace, Windows 95 was an unqualified success, promoting a general upgrade to 32-bit technology, and within a year or two of its release had become the most successful operating system ever produced.[citation needed]}

Windows 95 saw the beginning of the Browser wars when the World Wide Web began receiving a great deal of attention in the popular culture and mass media. Microsoft at first did not see potential in the Web and Windows 95 was shipped with Microsoft's own online service called The Microsoft Network, which was dial-up only and was used primarily for its own content, not internet access. As versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer were released at a rapid pace over the following few years, Microsoft used its desktop dominance to push its browser and shape the ecology of the web mainly as a monoculture.

Windows 95 (and its 32-bit professional counterpart Windows NT) evolved through the years into Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, sharing the same basic GUI themes (in XP, the user can even switch to the classical Windows 95/NT look). With Windows 98, the Active Desktop theme was introduced, allowing a HTML approach for the desktop, but this feature was coldly received by customers, who frequently disabled it. At the end, Windows Vista definitively discontinued it, but has a new SideBar on the desktop