Live data from Hacker News

The History of User Interfaces

history.user-interface.io

111–117 of 117 posts

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were some way to present the user with a form that could be used to type in applications to run. And maybe to help find those applications. And offer a streamlined mode for applications where you just need a quick response where the application doesn't open a new window but just provides a response in the same invocation-dialogue . Maybe apps could even take modifiers or specifications when invoked, so…

Great idea, I'm sure that would console a lot of people who are grieving over the state of user interfaces.

Any hope to convince them their condition's not terminal.

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#112
post #5

This is a nice collection of graphical user interfaces. This reminds me of the well known Toasty Tech collection ( http://toastytech.com/guis/ ), but with a narrative tying together the evolution of these GUIs. Some feedback: 1. All interfaces presented were graphical user interfaces for desktop personal computers. However, there's a wide world of user interfaces for computers beyond conventional point-and-click GUIs…

also OpenWin by Sun Microsystems

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#113

I'd love to see GEM, Canon Cat, NeXTSTEP, and BeOS here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS

> I'd love to see GEM, Canon Cat, NeXTSTEP, and BeOS here That would be good. I'd also like to see something that's at a much lower level, basically an catalog of specific ways of accomplishing specific basic tasks in a particular UI, current or historical. I've switched between different OSes, and each time I sorely miss some very particular thing (e.g. Windows' very useful line-based Home/End key behavior vs. Mac O…

In the case of Home/End, are you missing ⌘ + ← and ⌘ + → ?

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like what you’re describing boils down to a change in priorities for designs and how the user behavior is measured. Today, it seems to be mostly about recording what users do and then endlessly modifying the UI to extract the desired behaviors. This results in these kinds of layouts where a clean choice takes a back seat and user manipulation takes the front. This is less so the case with actual tools and UI’s…

An old friend of mine and I used to amuse each other by writing press releases for a fictional computing company that we called Infernosoft. Its tag line was "Software from Hell," but it also supposedly made hardware. One of its fictional products was the Infernosoft Auto-optimizing Keyboard. As you use it, it measures your usage and optimizes itself in response. It makes frequently-struck keys larger and moves them…

If I recall correctly, Infernosoft developed a type of tabbed dialog, the crowded tabs of which were shuffled anew in relation to the clicked (active) tab.

Other ingenious features followed, as if there were no limit to the creativity that Infernosoft could inflict on its customers. A clear and intelligible application menu was replaced by a set of "ribbons" that shuffled function buttons in relation to the clicked (active) button.

A clear and intelligible OS menu was replaced by a set of active buttons that flipped and showed images dynamically when the user the clicked "Start" menu button. The Start menu button was later replaced because it was excessively identifiable.

In later years, Infernosoft became drunk with success and stock options, and implemented a helpful character that would appear and make useless suggestions when people began to create office-related documents. Following the worldwide success of this beloved character, unseen macros were added to office documents that run without warning and can call Internet infrastructure to download very usable tools that have the ability to compromise Inferndows OS.

Such heights of usability were merely the stuff of nerdy dreams before Infernosoft achieved its total market dominance.

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#116
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was dumbfounded to find NeXTSTEP missing: it was among the very most influential GUIs in history. Much of 95's UI (and OS/2's UI) were stolen directly from it, and badly, right down to icons. This page also seems to focus not on UIs, not on GUIs, but just on GUIs for personal computers. No discussion of the tablet->PDA->phone->small device UI evolution at all, even though that UI route has now had profound impact e…

MIT Project Athena was also hugely influential: X Windows wasn't the only thing to spin out, but MATLAB and other pre-cursors of today's Jupyter style notebooks. The VAX super-mini grid could be used at night as a renderfarm ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Athena

To be honest, I think Athena and X have had very little influence. X's GUI design (and the Athena widget set) was entirely derivative of the Lisa/Mac interface. The notion of a client-server GUI system -- a historic extension of Unix terminals and servers -- has largely failed and is now disuse on modern Unix systems. The idea of a customizable window server has not spread beyond X to any other major system to my knowledge. Its font subsystem, graphics subsystem, and event management was and remains astonishingly primitive. It's hard to think of anything X innovated that now appears in a modern GUI.

Despite what the random Wikipedia contributor implied, neither MATLAB nor Maple have any historical relationship with X Windows or Project Athena. It is a huge stretch to say that Athena invented the concept of per-course educational and research software given that Apple had been doing that nearly a decade before, and indeed had built its entire business model on the concept. And the precursor to Jupyter notebooks was Mathematica, full stop. Mathematica invented the very concept of the interactive notebook, and it did so on NeXTSTEP.

Re: The History of User Interfaces

#117
Another interesting software to look at the UI/UX of is 3D design/animation software.

From Softimage, ALIAS|Wavefront through Maya to Blender etc... This UI model is interesting.

I personally started on Softimage on the SGI (Also, I didnt see IRIX in the list).

But Softimage had one of the most novel UIs of its time.

Post reply on HN