|  | Welcome to guidebook, a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them.
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| | Site last updated on 6th October 2006:
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| | Three of 14 posters for Macintosh’s 20th birthday present its groundbreaking GUI:
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| | | 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. |
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| |  | Since in 1987 RISC OS was still not ready for prime time, and the new Acorn Archimedes machines were about to ship, ArthurOS was written as a temporary replacement. As you can imagine, it was pretty limited, but already introduced several concepts that survived in RISC OS for many years – for example the icon bar at the bottom of the screen (by many considered the inspiration for taskbar in Windows 95) and pop-up menus invoked by pressing the middle mouse button.
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| |  | GUIs weren’t always so forgiving as Windows XP when you typed in an incorrect password. And they haven’t always warned you when you accidentally pressed Caps Lock. Check out how other systems react to password-related mistakes.
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| |  | Contrary to most other GUIs, OS/2 opted for shredder instead of trash can – this might have been related to the court decision that prohibited Microsoft from using trash can in early editions of Windows. Unfortunately, as with the real-life shredder, this one had no undo feature.
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