The graphical user interface is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard.
The history of the graphical user interface, understood as the use of graphic icons and a pointing device to control a computer, covers a five-decade span of incremental refinements, built on some constant core principles. Several vendors have created their own windowing systems based on independent code, but with basic elements in common that define the WIMP "window, icon, menu and pointing device" paradigm.
Qt is a free and open-source widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed. Qt is currently being developed by The Qt Company, a publicly listed company, and the Qt Project under open-source governance, involving individual developers and organizations working to advance Qt. Qt is available under both commercial licenses and open source GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, and LGPL 3.0 licenses.
Liberty BASIC (LB) is a commercial computer programming language and integrated development environment (IDE). It has an interpreter, developed in Smalltalk, which recognizes its own dialect of the BASIC programming language. It runs on 16- and 32-bit Windows and OS/2.
NeWS is a discontinued windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid-1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S. H. Rosenthal. The NeWS interpreter was based on PostScript extending it to allow interaction and multiple "contexts" to support windows. Like PostScript, NeWS could be used as a complete programming language, but unlike PostScript, NeWS could be used to make complete interactive programs with mouse support and a GUI.
In computing, cross-platform software is computer software that is implemented on multiple computing platforms. Cross-platform software may be divided into two types; one requires individual building or compilation for each platform that it supports, and the other one can be directly run on any platform without special preparation, e.g., software written in an interpreted language or pre-compiled portable bytecode for which the interpreters or run-time packages are common or standard components of all platforms.
Text-based user interface (TUI), also called textual user interface or terminal user interface, is a retronym coined sometime after the invention of graphical user interfaces (GUI). TUIs display computer graphics in text mode. An advanced TUI may, like GUIs, use the entire screen area and accept mouse and other inputs.
Fast Light Toolkit is a cross-platform widget library for graphical user interfaces (GUIs), developed by Bill Spitzak and others. Made to accommodate 3D graphics programming, it has an interface to OpenGL, but it is also suitable for general GUI programming.
AutoHotkey is a free, open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows, initially aimed at providing easy keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys, fast macro-creation and software automation that allows users of most levels of computer skill to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application. User interfaces can easily be extended or modified by AutoHotkey. The AutoHotkey installation includes its own extensive help file, and web-based documentation is also available.
The Magic User Interface is an object-oriented system by Stefan Stuntz to generate and maintain graphical user interfaces. With the aid of a preferences program, the user of an application has the ability to customize the system according to personal taste.
In computer programming, Yoix is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. The Yoix interpreter is implemented using standard Java technology without any add-on packages and requires only a Sun-compliant JVM to operate. Initially developed by AT&T Labs researchers for internal use, it has been available as free and open source software since late 2000.
The Common Lisp Interface Manager (CLIM) is a Common Lisp-based programming interface for creating user interfaces—i.e., GUIs. It is a completely object-oriented User Interface Management System, using the Common Lisp Object System and is based on the idea of stream input and output. There are also facilities for output device independence. It is descended from the GUI system Dynamic Windows of Symbolics's Lisp machines Main development was between 1988 and 1993. CLIM 2.0 was released in 1993.
KTurtle is an educational programming environment for turtle graphics. It is released under the open-source GNU General Public License and is part of the KDE SC 4. KTurtle has a built-in programming language that is loosely based on the Logo programming language. It is one of the few localized programming languages; the programming commands are translated to the human language of the programmer.
In computing, Microwindows is a windowing system which is full featured enough to be used on a PC, an embedded system or a PDA. The Nano-X Window System is an Open Source project aimed at bringing the features of modern graphical windowing environments to smaller devices and platforms. The project was renamed to Nano-X Window System, due to legal threats from Microsoft regarding the Windows trademark.
Windows 1.0 is a graphical personal computer operating environment developed by Microsoft. Microsoft had worked with Apple Computer to develop applications for Apple's January 1984 original Macintosh, the first mass-produced personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) that enabled users to see user friendly icons on screen. Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985, as the first version of the Microsoft Windows line. It runs as a graphical, 16-bit multi-tasking shell on top of an existing MS-DOS installation. It provides an environment which can run graphical programs designed for Windows, as well as existing MS-DOS software. Its development was spearheaded by the company founder Bill Gates after he saw a demonstration of a similar software suite known as Visi On at COMDEX.
Hollywood is a commercially distributed programming language developed by Andreas Falkenhahn which mainly focuses on the creation of multimedia-oriented applications. Hollywood is available for AmigaOS, MorphOS, WarpOS, AROS, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Android. Hollywood has an inbuilt cross compiler that can automatically save executables for all platforms supported by the software. The generated executables are completely stand-alone and do not have any external dependencies, so they can also be started from a USB flash drive. An optional add-on also allows users to compile projects into APK files.
