WIMP (user interface)

The English acronym WIMP mostly stands for “Windows”, “Icons”, “Menus” and “Pointer” (or “pointing device”). It describes the currently dominant basic concept of modern graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The four terms translated into German mean: windows , symbols , menus and pointers .

Windows

Windows are mostly adjacent or superimposed zones that contain text and image documents, editing tools and the like. v. a. m. can include. Some types of windows can be freely changed in size and position, while others are used e.g. B. only to display warning dialogues with a fixed size and position.

Icons

Symbols ( Engl. Icon) are usually compact images, documents, applications, application functions, etc. represent and may be accompanied by a short explanatory text. Examples are warning symbols, tool icons , navigation arrows and favicons . Compared to mere lines of text, icons allow many functions and types of media to be grasped more quickly and recognized more intuitively: "People quickly notice something in the picture that they could no longer grasp when reading."

Menus

Menus are mostly fold-out selection lists for the available application functions. So-called pull-down menus only fold down, as their menu bar is always at the top of the monitor - the latter has the ergonomic advantage that you don't have to pay attention to the exact height position when clicking the menu bar, but simply the mouse pointer can slide along the edge of the monitor. The situation is correspondingly different with pull-up menus (at the bottom of the monitor) and pop-up menus (at any point). Other menu types are cake menus , context menus and the like. a.

pointer

The pointer is the main pointing and editing symbol that can be moved on the GUI monitor and can be controlled using a pointing device (e.g. a mouse ). Depending on the application context, the mouse pointer represents the pointing and editing position currently selected by the user with a suitable symbol (arrow, insertion mark, gripping hand, index finger, waiting loop, etc.).

Special features of the WIMP method

The basic concept of direct manipulation is indirectly included here: Any material (document) in a building (operating system) can be edited using a tool (program) without having to type in command lines. Based on the humane WIMP principle u. a. the WYSIWYG principle.

In the course of the development of new operating technologies such as multi-touch displays or data gloves, as well as advances in the direction of ubiquitous computing (computer ubiquity), however, weaknesses of this operating concept are becoming apparent. These new operating methods are much more adapted to human intuition than the WIMP concept, so that the operation is faster and the user is less distracted from his actual activity. So far, however, this has been at the expense of universality.

history

A first milestone in WIMP history is the NLS (oN-Line System) developed at the Stanford Research Institute under the direction of Douglas Engelbart and others , which was presented to the public in 1968. Some NLS developers moved to Xerox PARC in the early 1970s to implement WIMP-supported Smalltalk , which in turn was the inspiration for Apple's Mac OS .

Web links

A brief history of the WIMP interface ( Memento from February 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive )

Offline media

Douglas C. Engelbart et al .: SRI-ARC. A technical session presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, Dec. 9, 1968 (NLS demo '68: The computer mouse debut), eleven films and six videos (100 min.), Engelbart Collection, Stanford University Library, Menlo Park (CA).
Michael Friedewald: The computer as a tool and medium · The intellectual and technical roots of the personal computer , Diepholz / GNT, Berlin, 1999.

Footnotes (citations, notes)

^ Otto Neurath (1931): picture statistics according to the Viennese method . In: Rudolf Haller, Robin Kinross (1991, ed.): Gesammelte Bildpädagogische Schriften , Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, page 180.
↑ Cf. Achim Gehrke: Room metaphors and orientation support using the example of a network editor environment based on the tool, material and building metaphor , diploma thesis, Department of Computer Science (archive), 1998, University of Hamburg, pass.
↑ See Douglas C. Engelbart et al .: SRI-ARC. A technical session presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, Dec. 9, 1968 (NLS demo '68: The computer mouse debut), eleven films and six videos (100 min.), Engelbart Collection, Stanford University Library, Menlo Park (CA).
↑ See Alan Kay : The early history of Smalltalk . In: ACM SIGPLAN notices (conference journal), Vol. 28, No. 3, March 1993, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, pp. 69 ff.

[1] Otto Neurath (1931): picture statistics according to the Viennese method . In: Rudolf Haller, Robin Kinross (1991, ed.): Gesammelte Bildpädagogische Schriften , Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, page 180.

[2] Cf. Achim Gehrke: Room metaphors and orientation support using the example of a network editor environment based on the tool, material and building metaphor , diploma thesis, Department of Computer Science (archive), 1998, University of Hamburg, pass.

[3] See Douglas C. Engelbart et al .: SRI-ARC. A technical session presentation at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, Dec. 9, 1968 (NLS demo '68: The computer mouse debut), eleven films and six videos (100 min.), Engelbart Collection, Stanford University Library, Menlo Park (CA).

[4] See Alan Kay : The early history of Smalltalk . In: ACM SIGPLAN notices (conference journal), Vol. 28, No. 3, March 1993, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, pp. 69 ff.