Definition of GUI (Graphical Interface)

Although now it seems the most normal thing in the world to interact in a computer with icons, windows and various graphic elements, until not so long ago (the beginning of the eighties of the last century) it was common to work only with the keyboard and entering commands on a command line.

If we owe anyone to use the mouse today to interact with computers, it is Steve Jobs and Apple, as on a visit to Xerox's PARC lab in Palo Alto, Jobs was shown the mouse and the Interface graph in a computer, two inventions that Xerox did not trust to launch commercially, and the great Apple founder took them for the future computers of his company.

Although Xerox used the graphical environment on some computers, it was Apple who really did. popularized through the Lisa, the Apple II GS, and later the Mac (and, from here, to its successors). Also platforms such as the Commodore Amiga or Atari with their ST incorporated the graphical environment.

For PCs with DOS, shadowing arose, graphical environments that worked on DOS, such as GEM (

Graphical Environment Manager) from Digital Research or the first versions of Windows from Microsoft.

Evolution was unstoppable, and from being a program that ran on DOS on a PC, the graphical environment became part of the operating system with Windows NT 3.51 and, later, Windows 95

The rest of the history of graphical environments is, worth the redundancy, history, but... What elements basically make up a GUI?

Icons to identify files, programs and other elements, windows to encapsulate applications and to be able to arrange them on the screen, a desktop and some element of ordering and management of open applications make up the main and most distinctive elements of a graphical environment of Username

East paradigm tries to recreate, in a certain way, a classic desk table, the elements that we find in it and their order. We must understand this paradigm as the son of an era in which we passed, precisely from desk tables to computer desks.

Usually, the windows that contain the applications are resizable, with borders that allow redefining their vertical dimension and horizontal, and some elements in the form of an icon at some point on these edges that allow the window to be maximized (make it occupy the entire screen), minimize it (fold it over itself so that it is not visible on the screen) and close it (and, with it, the program or document that contained).

Applications that run in windows must be prepared for graphical mode, and follow some guidelines for appearance, a look & feel; usually, the company producing the operating system provides tools for programming in the form of APIs and libraries, as well as some design guides to make it easier for developers to make their creations following a standard.

In this way, users see a coherence between all the applications that are part of the graphical environment, working in the same way in all of them.

In text environments, on the other hand, each application had its own model, so with each new program, we had to learn from scratch how to work. The graphical environment is, in addition to being more practical, more intuitive.

To work with a graphical environment, our main device will be the mouse. All systems “understand” as different the actions of clicking the left mouse button once, clicking it twice, or clicking the button once right.

However, things are changing ...

The new paradigm of many devices, such as smartphones and tablets, is touch, and others such as smart TVThey require interfaces that, while still being graphical, work differently from desktop computing

This has led to the birth of purely graphical operating systems, which do not have a command line or mask it, such as iOS or Android.

In these, we no longer use the mouse, but our fingers, and the clicks have become taps; tap or double tap, long tap, two-finger actions such as pinch and zoom, are the ones that are used now.

Among the most popular graphic environments we have:

• Windows. Although it started - they say - as a copy of the Mac's graphical environment, it became the most popular for being available on the PC platform (the most popular among users, too) and for the well-played cards of Microsoft. And if anyone claims that Bill Gates' company pushed for Windows to take its place today, tell me if this is not playing its cards right ...
• Mac OS. A classic and, as I have said before, the system "guilty" that the paradigm of the graphical environment began to spread among users.
• GNOME. One of the two most popular graphical environments for Linux / UNIX.
• KDE. The other graphical environment, along with GNOME.

Photos: Fotolia - Neyro / vege

Topics in GUI (Graphical Interface)