[HN Gopher] Building the First GUIs
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Building the First GUIs
Author : zdw
Score : 43 points
Date : 2021-06-08 14:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (computer.rip)
(TXT) w3m dump (computer.rip)
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Note, the previous post referenced (but not linked) in the text
| appears to be this: https://computer.rip/2021-05-24-dialogs-not-
| taken.html
| coliveira wrote:
| > The thing is, CP/M and DOS were both primitive operating
| systems by modern standards. CP/M and DOS were not multi-tasking.
|
| One of the reasons is that the first Intel processor to support
| multi-tasking was 386. When DOS was created, there was no
| hardware support for multiprocessing and virtual memory.
| msla wrote:
| > One of the reasons is that the first Intel processor to
| support multi-tasking was 386.
|
| Not quite. The 80286 was not a good CPU, but it could do
| multitasking:
|
| https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80286/index.html
|
| > The second generation of x86 16-bit processors, Intel 80286,
| was released in 1982. The major new feature of the 80286
| microprocessor was protected mode. When switched to this mode,
| the CPU could address up to 16 MB of operating memory (previous
| generation of 8086/8088 microprocessors was limited to 1 MB).
| In the protected mode it was possible to protect memory and
| other system resources from user programs - this feature was
| necessary for real program multitasking. There were many
| operating systems that utilized the 80286 protected mode: OS/2
| 1.x, Venix, SCO Xenix 286, and others. While this mode was
| useful for multitasking operating systems, it was of limited
| use for systems that required execution of existing x86
| programs. The protected mode couldn't run multiple virtual 8086
| programs, and had other limitations as well:
|
| > 80286 was a 16-bit microprocessor. Although in protected mode
| the CPU could address up to 16 MB of memory, this was
| implemented using memory segments. Maximum size of memory
| segment was still 64 KB.
|
| > There was no fast and reliable way to switch back to real
| mode from protected mode.
|
| More about OS/2 on the 80286:
|
| https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/os2/history/os210/ind...
| amelius wrote:
| I wonder when we'll see the _last_ GUIs, and everything will be
| speech-based.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| I've always thought the last interface would effectively be
| notepad/text.
|
| As long as there are minds there will be text.
|
| As long as text can be complex we will have to consume it in
| blocks and probably visually (or the direct brain interface
| equivalent)
| TuringTest wrote:
| You may want to check this beautiful (yet expensive) beast
| ;-)
|
| https://remarkable.com/
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I dread that moment, if it ever happens. Imagine being on the
| subway or in a cafe with a dozen people talking to their
| devices. And say goodbye to privacy; everyone will know what
| you're doing.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Considering the number of people I've seen on buses and
| trains shouting "OP-ER-AY-TOR!" into an IVR system, we're
| already halfway there.
| jasonhong wrote:
| > I wonder when we'll see the last GUIs, and everything will be
| speech-based
|
| The answer is never. The reason is that different kinds of UIs
| are effective for different kinds of tasks.
|
| I can't remember who I heard this from, but they asked the
| audience to imagine a speech-based steering wheel for cars.
| "Turn left... more... more... MORE!!! LESS! LESS!"
|
| Speech also has problems with sensitive data in public places
| ("Please enter in your password" or "Your stock portfolio is
| now worth ..."), has problems with noise, and can also
| interfere with some parts of your cognitive processes. In
| addition, speech is serial, which means that you can pretty
| much only process one stream at a time. Contrast this with a
| web page that you can skim, or a visualization that can show a
| lot of data.
|
| Different kinds of interactions have different tradeoffs.
| Speech is good for some tasks, and not very good for others.
| monocasa wrote:
| I don't know that speech will kill GUIs (your eyes allow much
| higher bandwidth than your ears), but direct neural interfaces
| might.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I wonder when we 'll see the last GUIs, and everything will be
| speech-based._
|
| Not in our lifetimes.
|
| People have been promising speech recognition since at least
| the late 70's. Today's "digital assistants" are little more
| than parlor tricks, on those occasions when they work.
|
| They don't seem much more accurate than my old Covox
| Voicemaster.
| yoz-y wrote:
| They are quite accurate. But most things we do on computers
| are things we want to look up and see. Text is scannable, a
| voice message is not. You can pan and zoom in a map, but not
| in dictated instructions. Listening to books and articles is
| fine, but you want to see a movie.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Never, because speech is a terribly ambiguous and low-bandwidth
| communication technique to transfer technical information and
| commands. Not to mention that it is terribly inconvenient if
| several people in the same room use it at the same time.
| [deleted]
| jarmitage wrote:
| When I get asked to give talks about interaction design I show
| Figure 3 from Kay and Goldberg's Personal Dynamic Media (1977)
| [1], with the "interim Dynabook" part of the caption redacted,
| and ask the students to fill in the blank. They usually guess
| "personal computer" and are then shocked to learn the actual
| framing and the overall backstory.
|
| [1]
| http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.656...
| bmitc wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand. What would you expect them to guess?
| What are they shocked at?
| Rochus wrote:
| > _The modern GUI, as we understand it, can be attributed almost
| entirely to the work of Douglas Engelbart._
|
| Sketchpad by Ivan Sutherland was released in 1963, see e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchpad. The NORAD/SAGE display
| systems which had light pens as pointing devices were even older.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Amiga, GEOS, GEM. If you want to talk about the early GUIs you
| can start with Xerox I think, but Apple was not the only one back
| then.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Indeed, the genesis of GEM was with Lee Jay Lorenzen who left
| Xerox to come to DR after he tried to pitch a light version of
| the Star's GUI that would run on PC-class hardware. So although
| there was obviously a lot copied from the Mac there was also a
| lot that came from his experience at Xerox.
|
| Here's his presentation of his prototype, in 1982, quite a
| while before the Mac or Lisa were released:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBGRZftS30
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Is there a growing sense that our GUI/UI paradigms took a wrong
| step somewhere in CS history and we've pushed the current UI path
| as far as it will go?
|
| Is it only because I myself am building an alternate OS interface
| or has this become a popular subject of conversation?
| bsder wrote:
| > Is there a growing sense that our GUI/UI paradigms took a
| wrong step somewhere in CS history and we've pushed the current
| UI path as far as it will go?
|
| Well, there are two conflated problems here:
|
| 1) The GUI and interacting with humans, itself.
|
| I don't think we've even scratched the surface here. I'm not a
| big fan of the Instagram/TikTok "HAH! Everything is hidden,
| Boomer! If you aren't spending 5 hours a day with our
| application talking to your friends how to use our application
| you'll never figure it out." However, at least _some_ stuff is
| different.
|
| 2) The software implementation of the GUI underneath
|
| I do think we've gotten lost in a local extremum here. The
| whole "The GUI must run on the main thread" when we've got
| gajillions of cores spread across the CPU and GPU is a
| _gigantic_ problem. We really need a multithreaded UI
| implementation.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Is there a growing sense that our GUI /UI paradigms took a
| wrong step somewhere in CS history and we've pushed the current
| UI path as far as it will go?_
|
| Yes. It was called "web UI".
|
| This brought a level of casualness and lack of rigor, that
| infected native UIs as well.
|
| In the 90s there was a lot of GUI research, including by major
| companies like Microsoft and Apple, and lots of innovations.
|
| But even more importantly, the standard practices of the main
| OS makers, favored a uniform look, with clear affordances (e.g.
| button bevels), and so on. The apex of with would be something
| like Windows 2000, Mac OS 8, BeOS, NeXT, and the like.
|
| Stuff like "mystery meat navigation", "hamburger menus",
| "invisible scrollbars", huge padding, buttons that look like
| text, and so on, including "let's make the whole desktop app
| interface in the DOM" where post-2000 additions, and not for
| the better.
| jandrese wrote:
| I've had the feeling that back in the 80s through the 90s there
| was a lot of formal design study of UI and UX. Actual
| scientific studies were taken of what makes for the most
| efficient and economical graphical UI.
|
| And then the designers came and threw away so much of that
| knowledge because they wanted to make something that looks good
| in screenshots. Visible controls are ugly they said, so all
| buttons and controls get hidden away under some nondescript
| icon that doesn't even look like an interactive element (maybe
| 3 lines in the corner or something). Scrollbars are uncool so
| now they disappear immediately and you just have to know where
| to look for them. White space is visually pleasing so just fill
| the screen with it. Old rules about making buttons look like
| buttons are completely ignored so the screenshot is pretty.
| Sure you have to hunt around like a blind person in an alley
| trying to make things actually work, but it sure looks nice
| doesn't it?
| agumonkey wrote:
| the context of GUI use has also changed dramatically.. UIs
| were used to manipulate semi complex to complex formal
| documents in 2D, people were trained, it was all very
| important .. nowadays we can bring it down to swipe and tap
| over floating selfies. I'm sure nobody in the mainstream
| would ever use an 80s application no matter how good/better
| it is.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I feel like every front-end engineer should be required to
| read The Design of Everyday Things and pass a quiz before
| being handed a job.
|
| Building shitty UI because it looks cool in your marketing
| materials is doing a criminal disservice to your users and
| ultimately your business.
| Benjammer wrote:
| I kind of disagree, I think this was more based on ad-tech
| taking over and pages optimizing for SEO and session-length
| and things like that. The metrics changed when the customer
| changed as we moved to free software.
| jandrese wrote:
| It seems kind of a cheat to increase session length by
| making your page so hard to use that people will spend
| extra time just trying to figure out the controls.
| coliveira wrote:
| I believe there is space for great looking design that is
| also functional. The problem is that achieve this balance
| takes time and knowledge, and the software industry has a
| very short term focus, so you end up with non-solutions that
| are supported purely by hype.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Also, UI design has traditionally used visual styles from
| minimalism and the Bauhaus, mainly because the very low-
| resolutions where it was created (desktops first, later
| mobile screens) didn't support anything more ornate that
| would be still visually appealing.
|
| I long for the day when more elaborate and luxurious art-
| deco-based interfaces become fashionable in UI design.
| bmitc wrote:
| Do you know of any good (presumably old) resources like books
| or articles that cover efficient economical GUIs and GUI
| frameworks?
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