GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery is a great resource on the history of GUIs. It has great charts comparing things like component icons for text editors across time and across different GUIs. It documents the evolution of GUIs from the Mac OS to historic ones like the Amiga OS. It has ads, sounds for Windows (like the startup sound) and links to articles. It only has a couple of applications documented (iTunes and Photoshop), but it is still a must see.
2 thoughts on “GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery”
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A little off-topic, but this made me think about the heavily desktop-oriented software leading the GUI way for most major operating systems (Windows, OS X, and Linux) these days. What will be the next paradigm? When the `real’ desktop is ruled by a virtual desktop, how will we reference this on the computer desktop? 3d desktops (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz) and eye candy (OS X, Windows Vista) are fun to play with, but do they really help the way we work or are they merely distractions? Frankly I prefer the more minimal approach of using plain old window managers because they’re so fast and (for the most part) problem-free. This also reminds me of (a little more off-topic I’m afraid) the emulation of analogue audio gear on computers. Pro: the interface is intuitive for those who are familiar with the concepts of the physical device, however, con: why funnel our experience through an analogue when digital media can move beyond mimicking physical devices by exploiting the non-physical aspects of digital interfaces?
Personally I think the next paradigm will be for cell phones and hand-held devices and it will be able to take advantage of location information. As for the PC paradigm, I’m not covinced 3D desktops like Croquet will take off. I’m more taken by what Apple is trying to do with “Time Machine” – giving people a way to move a folder back in time to recover files. This isn’t a new paradigm, but I feel developers are trying to figure out how to deal with versioning and time – witness wikis and so on.