Welcome to guidebook, a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them. Site last updated on 6th October 2006: two articles about Xerox: “Xerox xooms toward the office of the future” and “The lab that ran away from Xerox”, and a funny essay about... the cow metaphor New set of posters with mouse pointers: Apple Lisa was the first commercial personal computer to be operated by a graphical user interface. Xerox Alto, the first GUI-based computer from the ’70s, was a research project, while Xerox Star and PERQ, both predating Lisa, were technically workstations. The first, 1984’s Macintosh interface was black and white, limited, single-tasked and about 200K in size. Yet it showed the world that personal computing could be much friendlier than the command line and set up trends to be followed by nearly all later GUIs. After the GUI introduces itself, it is usually your turn to reciprocate. Compare all the ways you can arrange two simple text controls for login and password. Apple bought all of the advertising space in November/December special election issue of Newsweek in 1984, and devoted it entirely to Macintosh. Many of the 39 pages of the ad explain the idea behind its mouse-driven user interface. Take a look.
	Copyright © 2002-2006 Marcin Wichary.