GUI

GUI and the concept of 'form follows function'

GUI - Graphical user interface.


The first time i actually had my own pc was the time i got into GUI's and their workings. I'm the kind of person who needs to know about everything and why something does something and how it does it. I also breath design and music. So. What's the first thing i did when i got a pc. I downloaded Winamp. What does it do? Plays music and can be skinned. We are today seeing the impression of skinning far more than years ago. This is apparent in Windows and Mac, more so in Windows as you can use different skins (visual themes).

So i went and created myself my own Winamp skin, simply to see if i could and for indivualism. Where did this lead? Well, while disliking Mac OS but liking the schema of Windows, I set about hacking Windows code. This resulted in a highly customised, individual UI for Windows that was personal to me and the way I work.

Below is a few early customised Windows UI's from 2004. Click the images for a larger image (opens in a new window)






So.....'form follows function', as quoted from Louis Sullivan. This is a principle associated with Modern architecture and industrial design in the 20th Century, which states that the shape of a building or object should be predicated on its intended purpose.

The honor for producing the first working GUI goes to Doug Englebart – at the time an employee of Stanford Research Institute. Englebart and colleagues created a program called the oNLine System in 1965-‘68. This program used the first mouse, a windowing system, and hypertext, and was based on a description of a system called “memex” proposed by Vannevar Bush in 1945. The name “mouse” comes from this period. The mouse used in oNLine had three buttons on one end and the line coming out the other end. Apparently, the buttons for eyes and nose, plus a cord for a tail, reminded the users of a mouse and the name stuck.

Years later, still in a time when nobody knew what the future of computers was to be, Xerox put together a team of researchers who did nothing more than put ideas together to see what they produced. The team, located at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, was convinced that Englebart’s model would work on computers available for individual work stations, and they produced two working models, the Alto and the Star. The Star was made available to the public, mouse and all, in 1981. But it was very expensive, and they sold only 25 thousand of them. But this was the first GUI-based OS available to the public.

The Star had many limitations. The name is for the OS, which was very powerful, and not the computer, which was not very powerful. The computer was unable to handle the demands of the OS with predictable results.

Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple, saw some of the potential in a GUI during tours of the Xerox facility. Some say that is where Jobs got his ideas for the GUI found on the Mac. Jobs did see some programming that contained GUI concepts, but the development team for the Lisa (and Bill Gates, by the way) saw the release of the Star. Both the development team and Bill Gates left with new visions for the future of the PC. The Lisa was retrofitted with a GUI OS before it was released and Microsoft began working on Windows. Like the Star, Lisa was a very expensive computer and few sold.

The Macintosh was released in 1984 as a relatively inexpensive alternative to Line Command Operating Systems, and the rest (as they say) is history.

Src : http://imrl.usu.edu/OSLO/technology_writing/004_003.htm

So as the availability of computers spread and more people used them the more ideas people conceived about their usablity (their function). So as computers ever evolve to do new tasks they have to constantly evolve to be able to perform these tasks (form).

The following screenshot is my final piece of work. I was unable to take a video of the actual GUI running and so you are presented with a screenshot. To actually post what i've done i don't think i would actually be able to do as it is too complicated. Firtly the actual Windows system code is altered and changed / modified with my own. Also icon sets are modified and replaced aswell as log on screens, boot screens and visual styles. To complete my GUI i have also used programs such as Samurize which i also designed a front end for which i think fits well with the rest of the UI such as the wallpaper etc. Other applications used are Launchy and Stardock.

The Future of GUI

For the first part i think we have just turned a corner in the world of GUI with Microsoft Vista and and especially Ubuntu with Beryl (a distro of Linux with a window manager) using some nice effects that you work with every day.

Below is a video showing the awesome power that Beryl contains and what it is capable of even with low end hardware.



So where does GUI go from here. Well by the looks of things very minimal. Touch is to be the main sense used as the interface with very minimal GUI. This presentation by Jeff Han leads us in to the future.

posted by D3v @ 6:59 PM