X-Nico

8 unusual facts about Graphical User Interface


Drill down

In a GUI-environment, "drilling-down" may involve clicking on some representation in order to reveal more detail.

Graphical user interface

The menus were accessed by different keys (control in WordStar, Alt or F10 in Microsoft programs, "/" in Lotus 1-2-3, F9 in Norton Commander to name a few common ones).

Headless computer

It is also possible to use systems such as X Window System and VNC combined with virtual display drivers allow remote connections to headless machines through ordinary Graphical user interfaces, often running over network protocols like the internet's TCP/IP.

NetObjects

Its target market were designers who need complete control over page layout and a similar user interface as desktop publishing applications.

OneSIS

Since oneSIS was designed with the Linux-systems administrator in mind, users will not find proprietary-GUI frontends here; all the tools to image a box, copying root-images, converting diskless machines diskfull, etc. are accessible exclusively through the command line interface (CLI).

ProgDVB

Starting with version 5.x ProgDVB began using the .NET Framework for its GUI.

Van Wolverton

While nearly all home computers today have some sort of Graphical User Interface, that was not so back then.

Voicemail

More complicated systems may use other input devices such as voice or a computer interface.


Andy Hertzfeld

Working for Bud Tribble alongside Bill Atkinson and Burrell Smith, Hertzfeld became a primary software architect of the Macintosh Operating System, which was considered revolutionary in its use of the graphical user interface (GUI) where Jef Raskin also made contributions.

Appearance Manager

In pre-Mac OS X versions of the Macintosh operating system, the Appearance Manager controlled the overall look of the Mac GUI widgets and supported several themes.

Control-V

In many GUI environments, including Microsoft Windows and most desktop environments based on the X Window System, and in applications such as word processing software running in those environments, control-V can be used to paste text or other content (if supported) from the clipboard at the current cursor position.

Core Foundation

The most prevalent use of Core Foundation is for passing its own primitive types for data, including raw bytes, Unicode strings, numbers, calendar dates, and UUIDs, as well as collections such as arrays, sets, and dictionaries, to numerous OS X C routines, primarily those that are GUI-related.

Functoid

A functoid is a tool for applying methods to data via a GUI drag 'n drop interface from within the BizTalk Mapping tool.

GlobalView

Though the software it was based on had once been far ahead of its time (in terms of its integration and use of a graphical user interface), the high cost of the processor and later low speed of the emulator doomed it to poor sales (almost exclusively old customers of the Alto and Star, recognized as precursors of the Apple Macintosh but in themselves expensive corporate niche machines).

LCARS

The LCARS graphical user interface was designed by scenic art supervisor and technical consultant Michael Okuda.

Multitier architecture

Typically, the user interface runs on a desktop PC or workstation and uses a standard graphical user interface, functional process logic that may consist of one or more separate modules running on a workstation or application server, and an RDBMS on a database server or mainframe that contains the computer data storage logic.

Natural user interface

In the 1970s, '80s and '90s Steve Mann developed a number of user-interface strategies using natural interaction with the real world as an alternative to a command-line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI).

OPIE user interface

OPIE (Open Palmtop Integrated Environment) is an open source graphical user interface for PDAs and other devices running Linux.

ProMax

ProMax is a late generation Windows application which uses Microsoft Visio as the graphical user interface.

Trading room

Born during the same period, they share many technical features, such as a three-tier architecture, whose back-end runs on a Unix platform, a relational database on either Sybase or Oracle, and a graphical user interface written in English, since their clients are anywhere in the world.

WideStudio

This enables you to develop GUI applications that can run on Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/CE, Linux, FreeBSD, SOLARIS, Mac OS X (w/X11), BTRON, T-Engine, mu-CLinux (wo/X11) in various programming languages such as C/C++, Java, Perl, Ruby, Python, OCaml.

Xerox Daybreak

It ran the ViewPoint (later GlobalView) GUI and was used extensively throughout Xerox until being replaced by Suns and PCs.


see also

Adrift

ADRIFT, a graphical user interface used to create and play text adventures

AppleCare

For Mac computers running OS X Server, support covers server administration and network management issues using the graphical user interface of OS X Server.

MapInfo Professional

MapInfo was redesigned with an easier-to-use graphical user interface and was made available for the Microsoft Windows, UNIX and Macintosh operating systems.

Target–action

A prime example of this approach is the OpenStep API, which partly thanks to being based on the dynamic Objective-C language, has much of its graphical user interface implemented by using the target-action paradigm.

Web design program

The purpose of such a program is to make it easier for the designer to work with page and site elements through a graphical user interface that displays the desired results, typically in a WYSIWYG manner, while removing the need for the designer to have to work with the actual code that produces those results (which includes HTML or XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and others).

Windowing

Windowing system, a graphical user interface (GUI) which implements windows as a primary metaphor