Graphical User Interfaces: Crash Course Computer Science #26

Today, we're going to discuss the critical role graphical user interfaces, or GUIs played in the adoption of computers. Before the mid 1980's the most common way people could interact with their devices was through command line interfaces, which though efficient, aren't really designed for casual users. This all changed with the introduction of the Macintosh by Apple in 1984. It was the first mainstream computer to use a GUI, standing on the shoulder of nearly two decades of innovation including work from the father of the GUI himself, Douglas Englebart, and some amazing breakthroughs at Xerox Parc.
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[@MichaelRicksAherne]

I love the little wrap-up speech at the end of each episode, making a callback to one of the visionary ideas (in this case augmenting human intellect). It's really beautiful writing, almost poetic. And Carrie does a great job delivering it.

[@Ohio-ks2de]

This is extremely informative and this channel is a amazing source for information

[@Unassuming_Gay]

Hold your horses till you see the sociology stuff. Treat that as a bunch of horseshit piled with biased research xD

[@EvanRustMakes]

yup. Sociology is leftist propaganda

[@ndr2q]

Akato No, it just shows that there's a wave of stupid, drooling neanderthals have somehow taken over the Internet. The content here is great.

[@pet3590]

Crash Course is life

[@EvanRustMakes]

noobfish, KZbin has always been a more Conservative platform. And instead of doing a personal attack, why not formulate an actual rebuttal to what I said?

[@MECUIify]

2:38 Englebart doing let's plays before it was cool

[@firmman4505]

LOL!!

[@vylbird8014]

Windows 95's 'protected memory' was about as protected as putting a fragile sticker on a parcel. It was a matter of backwards compatibility: It was essential that Windows 95 be able to run programs written for DOS without issue, and most of those programs would not have worked at all under protected memory. There's a reason the OS was infamous for constant crashes and the Blue Screen of Death.

[@TDQ_Gaming]

Surprised me as well. I didn't think windows got protected memory until NT.

[@datastrategypros]

“[T]he complexity of the problems facing mankind [was] growing faster than our ability to solve them. Therefore, finding ways to augment our intellect would seem to be both a necessary and a desirable goal” Englebart was obviously way ahead of his times! Writing in 1962, even his wording seems very much aligned with the modern transhumanist movement.

[@Garland41]

I hope this isn't a weird question, but is this series going to cover the origin and creation of Computer viruses? Trojans, worms, etc? I can never seem to imagine why they were created or how.

[@kalylbmmi]

Garland41 imo dear vash, mainly for the lulz

[@chewchewpark4786]

Kalyl Santos you forgot to link to a dramatic explosion of a van.

[@jasonz8635]

It's like why would anyone vandalize property and things like arson. People just seem to want the world to burn. As for how, it's basically just exploiting holes in security and auto-starting things like screen recording software, background processes (For the lovely BSOD),. and so-on.

[@doggod106]

Some men just want to see the world burn.

[@erikrusso9808]

I doubt that they will cover that as a stand alone topic of Computer Science, but it might get mentioned somewhere down the line. However there are many interesting videos about viruses on other channels

[@IceMetalPunk]

I'm a developer. Many of my colleagues have a mindset of "real programmers use the terminal for everything". When I say I prefer a GUI when possible, they treat me like I can't possibly be a decent developer if I think that. I don't know why there's such terminal elitism in the industry, but you know what? I don't care. I know how to use the terminal just fine, but if humans had to remember specific words to get everything done, we'd have gone extinct very quickly. Why not make our lives easier if we can?

[@IceMetalPunk]

As a very simple example, sure, I can run "cpy /usr/myStuff/myProject/assets/graphics/ui/buttons/load.png /usr/myStuff/myProject/assets/graphics/ui/elements/open.png", but why would I do that when I can just drag-and-drop?

[@IceMetalPunk]

And before anyone says it: I know, I could shorten it with cd. But this isn't much better: cd /usr/myStuff/myProject/assets/graphics/ui/buttons cpy load.png ../elements/open.png Still more annoying then a simple drag-and-drop, considering when we move everything else in the universe outside of computers, we drag and drop it.

[@Zestyclose-Big3127]

IceMetalPunk I think _that_ specific task would be a tad hard on gui since you'd have to first open a GUI file manager as root (OK, maybe I'm basing things too much on how things work in GNU/Linux?). copying something from e.g. ~/a.jpg to ~/p.jpg would be easier with GUI though, especially when the file name isn't one that can be easily memorised (which is by far most of the time)

[@phir9255]

What do you think of the fact that(in Windows) when you have a directory opened in explorer you can type cmd in the adress bar to open command line in this exact directory?

[@AthAthanasius]

Which of GUI or CLI is easier/faster depends on the task. GUIs are good for simple tasks, like your "copy a single file" example, or the variation of "copy ALL of these files from here to there". Now try the equivalent of "cp 2007*.png 2010*.img 1997*.gif newdestination/". You can't use shift-click to select as there are three ranges there. ctrl-click one by one will take a long time if there are many files. You could of course do it as 3 separate operations, assuming the display sort is appropriate to be able to shift-click ranges. And if there are some "other extensions" mixed in with each year prefix you're going to spend longer figuring out how to, and doing, this in a GUI than on the commandline. But then we get to examples like the following, which takes a set of .json files, passes them through the 'jq' program to sort the data in them by the key names, and then outputs, for each file, the results to a new file, with the name based on the original filename: for i in *.json ; do jq -S '.' $i > `basename ${i} .json`-jqS.json ; done And now we can run diff (possibly 'diff -u', in this case I ended up using 'diff -y' for side by side output) on pairs of the files to see the differences.

[@JM-us3fr]

You are one of the best hosts of Crash Course we've ever had!

[@thx500]

Loved the way Carrie wrapped it up with the quote from Douglas Engelbart. Can't wait for the next video!

[@hanro50]

Yea... I swear its easier to reinstall Windows then to uninstall McAfee antivirus

[@firmman4505]

LMAO!!

[@MiguelAPerez]

I really enjoy this series. Thank you, Carrie Anne and all of the Crash Course team!

[@srwapo]

"Windows 95 introduced many elements still seen today, like the Start Menu..." Despite how hard MS tried to get rid of it! :D

[@wordart_guian]

well not exactly, the Windows 8 start screen was basically another version of the start menu. It did the same stuff, and was in the same place. It was only redesigned

[@MrCraigincanada]

I'm surprised when talking about natural selection there was no mention of the fsn 3d filesystem interface by SGI, famously displayed in the "It's a UNIX system! I know this!" scene from the movie Jurassic Park. It's interesting because most people still to this day think was an example of "fake computer interface" so commonly seen in film for decades.

[@punboleh7081]

Great series! I was hoping for a few words about application centric interfaces vs document centric interfaces, though. Other than that, I'm impressed with each episode how fast you go from a brief introduction to a deep dive, all in just a few minutes.

[@netindigo]

love this channel! Being a computer scientist myself I enjoy teaching vlogs like this one.

[@YoungEli9]

U actually have to be intelligent to even reach this level of information, God bless u all

[@juanmanuelrodriguez5492]

13 minutes of good compressed information, thanks.

[@PaintedCz]

I could nearly HEAR the CD tray closing. Windows 95 was my first computer. I was 5!!

[@uplink-on-yt]

Hmm... Microsoft Bob may yet live again... in The Metaverse! (add effects: either lightning in a stormy night, or a handful of white doves on a blue sky - your choice) Instead of a room on a desktop, it's a room all around you. May as well add a helpful dog to that room.

[@dvklaveren]

I still do manual copy-pasting in real life with real paper and real scissors at times. I sometimes need to make a summary of something and the only way I'd be able to concentrate at times is if I don't have a super useful everything-tool in front of me. It's a lot of work, but I refined it a lot.

[@steevepierre-louis9418]

Think this is definitely my favorite episode!

[@orneliofernandopenicelacha6404]

I like this channel, the way you make and explain the content is amazing. Many thanks.

[@WindFireAllThatKindOfThing]

I was just a kid, but I remember the Light Pen vs Mouse tech expo controversy in the beginning of the 80's. Back then, everyone figured the pen (and handwriting recognition software) would be how we interface with the GUI.

[@npinero1]

OMG I was a kid when all of this happened. Wow, time flies.

[@vickdeem]

You are unbelievably GOOD with these insights! Wish I can like this video a million times.

[@CulturePhilter]

I'd completely forgotten about Microsoft BOB. As a kid I loved it.

[@CVixen]

cant wait for the next ep!

[@xwolpertinger]

At 4:00 you can see a nice example of the Smalltalk-80 IDE which also highlights some specific quirks ( the ease of use when working with and iterating over Collections, the fact that conditions are handled by sending the message "ifTrue:[ ] ifFalse[ ]" to a Boolean, the fact that EVERYTHING is an object (Booleans are objects, Classes are objects.. heck, even Smalltalk itself is an object).

[@RicochetForce]

Goddamn this was good. Also, seeing those Windows 1.0 and 3.0 shots made me feel old.

[@TheUglyGnome]

Windows 3 was the pinnacle of PC GUIs. Included all GUI elements you needed and just enough of eye-candy to make it pleasant, but still didn't isolate you too far from the underlying basic concepts of your computer system. Same of course applies to the motif-based systems of that time (like IRIX/4dwm ... my all time favorite system).

[@Roxor128]

Do you know if anyone has made a Windows 3-style GUI for Linux?

[@teamhaselmyer]

Well done Carrie!

[@marcushead9985]

I'd heard of Microsoft Bob--I was still a kid when it came out and am so very very old now--but I literally never knew what it did, nor did I ever have reason care enough to even look it up. And among other things, I now see why.

[@cecilyngoka9677]

Research of the Graphics unit interface ❤❤❤

[@marlls1989]

The best UI is still the terminal, emacs and/or vim

[@mateonegri8403]

boludo .. :))))))):((8:):(9

[@ProfessorSyndicateFranklai]

Fun fact, in Turing, the programming language by Holtsoft, you can create .exes with multiple windows for a single 'app'. Although it's environments crashes regularly, and way outdated in terms of features; you'll have to write your own library.

[@jousboxx9532]

11:40 OMG THANK YOU!!!

[@mrflamewars]

Tandy Deskmate is one of the GUIs that most people don't know about. Had a Tandy 1000 TX with Personal Deskmate 2 and Deskmate 3.5. Personal Deskmate 2 had a really awesome music program that used the Tandy's 3 voice sound chip.

[@MrSigmaSharp]

I'm 7 years professional developer and have two things to say about this video. 1) I never heard about WIMP and Xerox anywhere that was an excellent fact to know and 2) The pseudo-code sample part was completely useless.

[@CubeValidus]

What kind of developer?

[@Matthew_080]

Great video!

[@brocksprogramming]

Way to go Carrie Anne!

[@madartnurdwhosnuts4854]

thx you so much now i know where xerox got there Gui thx you so much

[@damianwong7503]

This is an excellent crash course episode. Why the f**k would anybody downvote it?

[@josvromans]

I am interested in the artwork (framed on the wall) at 3:42 Anyone has links to the original footage, or the artist, or the name for this collection of shapes? Maybe these posters belonged to a graphics program to show what you could make with it? What software and what computer (specific for the Xerox Alto?) was among the first to let the public generate these kind of shapes? Is it just a collection of different shapes, or is it a family of shapes, all generated in a similar way? I have many questions, just wondering :) Really enjoying this series, it's really great how much knowledge there is in every 10-12 minutes video! Very well made and well presented!

[@Malidictus]

Yes, I experienced plenty of design-related frustrations when I tried Windows 8.

[@chewchewpark4786]

Windows 95 was the best OS because of all them games. Chip's Challenge ftw!

[@michaelcain9324]

Love this show, totally cutting into my Netflix time. 🤔

[@JavierSalcedoC]

This series is so good! Time to rewatch The Pirates of Silicon Valley

[@samiswilf]

This video should be called *HISTORY* of Graphic User Interfaces Crash Course

[@bentoth9555]

I loved MS Bob. I mean I was in sixth grade at the time, but I loved it.

[@lucaslu6268]

While I did enjoy the history narrative of computer graphics breakthrough in the 1970s and 1980s, I did wish the video had focused more on how the bitmap actually worked, how the images were stored and displayed on the monitor. These are the topics that usually aren't well understood and most people take for granted. Just my opinion, still a very informative video!

[@brandontechnerd]

I saw a Xerox Alto demonstration at the Computer History Museum.

[@chewchewpark4786]

Another Carrie-Anne video! Whoop! 🤘🏼

[@Plystire]

My god, how my 15 yr old self needed this...

[@GamerX84]

Happy to see the Amiga Workbench represented! The 80s were awesome! Only Amiga!

[@TayoTheT1000]

I like how Microsoft is going back to Bob with the HoloLens. :P

[@PJGraham3]

1962? Wow! I was two years old! Had no idea GUI was that young (lol).

[@aidanjt]

All this development work and I'm still way more efficient at managing large directory structures with shell and accompanying UNIX utilities.

[@BertGrink]

I don't think Command Line Interfaces will ever die completely, there will always be tasks better suited for those than for GUIs. For instance, i once wrote a small 'script' (A.K.A. batch) file on my Amiga which would read a directory full of .LhA archives, and in turn generate a larger script which would then proceed to create a subdir for each archive, extract the contents into that subdir, delete the archive, and continue to the next file and do the same with that, and so on until it had processed every .LhA file. All this was done using ONE SINGLE AmigaDOS command, the LIST command which is very powerful and flexible. I can't see how this could be accomplished via a GUI.

[@robspiess]

[Select All] -> [Right-Click] -> [Extract into directory and delete archive]

[@frankschneider6156]

GUIs and CLI are different tools for different purposes. Give a CLI to an enduser or someone who doesn't know the OS and he'll be lost. Give him a GUI and he can pretty much immediately work. Give someone a GUI and tell him to automate a series of specific tasks and he'll usually fail or have to resort to macro-recorders or similar kludges. GUIs are great for interactively getting non-repetive work done without requiring any deeper system knowledge, but are pretty ill-suited for repetitive work. CLIs are great for creating batch jobs and automating tasks or working when your mouse driver is broken or when the system doesn't have a lot of computing power or doesn't want to waste the power it has on a GUI (eg embedded systems) or one wants to minimize the potential attack surface, but they are not highly intuitive and require time and work by the user to get somewhat familiar with them to be capable to use it somewhat efficently. So imho both are (at least today) different tools for different purposes. most endusers will probably never need to leave the GUI. Some systems, e.g. Android don't even come with an easily accessible CLI anymore.

[@tueemsyhu4846]

Cool Stuff!!😁👍

[@AM-rb4ps]

Carrie Anne, many years ago I read an article about using different GUI metaphors when introducing computers to different populations; in the article, they used the example of a GUI metaphor of houses in villages in a region that might be more salient to rural African populations. Ultimately, all GUIs are in some sense helping the user navigate a tree-diagram of nested files and programs; do you think the idea of different versions of metaphors for this structure has merit?

[@techsafi1744]

Thanks you are so energetic

[@WhompingWalrus]

MS Bob was awesome. It may have failed on the techy-types it was demoed and tested on, but so many people who are either brand new to or confused by computers (most people in cheaper office settings) would have flourished in that environment. Sucks that the techy-types thought it was condescending when it wasn't designed for them. Like showing a CLI-fanatic explorer.exe. They'll whine about it, but it's what most people need.

[@songwright]

It's nice that they mention Commodore computers, but they failed to mention that the Commodore Amiga was the first personal computer to offer color graphics, and this forced other manufacturers to do the same thing.

[@Qba86]

Heyyy... Did you just call Amiga Workbench "primitive"? Love this course, but we may have a problem here;)

[@phlsnst5882]

Damnnnn really good episode

[@downtownmicahbrown]

First "doobly-do", now a D20 roller? I see someone's a Matthew Colville fan! 👍

[@travischapman6763]

I remember BOB! It was more of a game to me at 5 y/o though.

[@The9gods]

I just hate it when I am clicking around on my computer and am suddenly attacked by Demogorgon.

[@angeldude101]

Where do tiling window managers fit into WIMP and the desktop metaphor? For example, I have no application icons visible and windows can't be stacked on top of each other. Many TWMs even discourage use of the mouse as well.

[@rogejedib333]

MS Bob is great! I still use it today. ;)

[@frankschneider6156]

Who is Mrs or Ms Bob ? Does she look hot ? Doesn't she mind just being used by you ? Isn't this highly unethical ?

[@Minastir1]

Why is this series so focused on Apple though? The main competitors for early PCs were Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, not Apple Macintosh. Also many of the modern GUI features were invented by Acorn for their RISC OS

[@AmaroqStarwind]

Windows 10, the first [effectively] single-tasking OS since MS-DOS.

[@wordart_guian]

eeh please explain how? currently running with a dozen tasks on 10, as I Always do.

[@AmaroqStarwind]

βωρδάρτ It's a joke about how badly Windows 10 performs on older hardware.

[@seekorburung8000]

this help me a lot to understand how win32 api work

[@marielsofiagutierrezzapien7929]

More merch of this pleaaase

[@KingsleyIII]

Uh-oh! Things are about to get GUI!

[@StoryMode180]

+infinity

[@aurorajarvis5502]

Go to your room and think about what you've punned

[@naumsei6221]

I didn't get the pun.

[@anthonymorford8804]

@@naumsei6221 it wasn't a very GUI one.

[@CubeValidus]

Why. Just...why. I hate it when people say it like "Gooey", I prefer G.U.I. or Graphical User Interface.

[@ivancito7790]

I remember Windows 95! My first ever computer ran on that.

[@obraznic]

OMG! they designed the New Balance shoes on a Macintosh! 9:48

[@jscottupton]

What I find interesting is that this history of GUI and the mouse starts in the 1960's. A bunch of You Tube videos claim that this all started in the 70's. And then Jobs accuses Gates of stealing from him. So there are lots of people fighting to get the credit.

[@Cubinator73]

At the time there wasn't any _event driven_ programming. There was something similar: Messages (which the Win32 API still uses to this day) Instead of hooking up functions to specific events, which then can be called without the target process even knowing, there was this facy message loop, one single function that takes in a message ID (~event type) and additional parameters (~event data), looked through a big table of message IDs and executed the code (~event handler) associated with that ID. For example: _Func MessageLoop (msg_id, additional_data)_ _If msg_id == 1 Then_ ... _Else If msg_id == 2 Then_ ... _End If_ _End Func_ instead of _Func Init_ _AddEventListener(Event1, MyEvent1Listener)_ _AddEventListener(Event2, MyEvent2Listener)_ _End Func_ _Func MyEvent1Listener (some_data)_ ... _End Func_ _Func MyEvent2Listener (some_data)_ ... _End Func_

[@RaymondHng]

What about the IBM Series/1 minicomputer released in 1976 that ran the Event Driven Executive operating system?

[@Cubinator73]

Well, I didn't know. I thought for sure, there was message systems first and event systems later. ;)

[@symphonyinrose]

The BOB GUI was peak, we were fools to let it slip between our fingers.

[@slothymcgee6388]

coo' vid, reminds me of the days u had to tape paper to the wall to game out, lol

[@deathdoor]

Ooooh, if only the people who works in these KZbin's interfaces watched this video... Why can't they put functionality and usability first?

[@ProfessorSyndicateFranklai]

They're testing. Don't worry, eventually they'll switch back once you complain enough. Start learning how to make automated complaining bots.

[@Crash-To-Desktop]

Perfectly fine if you ask me. I got nothing on the new interface.

[@deathdoor]

It LOOKs perfectly fine, I agree, but the problem is how it WORKs. Want and example? Go to "Watch Later" and try to remove one entry. What happens? The system switch back to the old interface because the new not only didn't really added or refined the usability, it worsened removing basic feature and simply as removing a damn entry on a list!

[@Carewolf]

Good workable UIs are really unfashionable these days in interface designer circles.

[@deathdoor]

But why put and effort to remove things that are already there and working? I still can't accept that they removed the ability to respond to comment directly from the notification icon.

[@erikrusso9808]

I'm getting my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Interactive Design, and this is really interesting :)

[@RaymondHng]

I was actually able to run Microsoft Windows 3.0 on an IBM PC XT with a Hercules monochrome graphics card.

[@unidorsalicosahedron7416]

I take it the handler asks for a signal at a set frequency, like say, 1000 Hz? Either that, or it's got to have some sort of interrupt system going on.

[@debkanchan]

And now kids are playing fortnite on such a magnificent tech with rich legacy

[@EqualsThreeable]

I remember BOB, those were the days.

[@BogdanSerban]

"It would bulge when full" Oh, Carrie...

[@Thegreatakashdeep]

THANKS :-)

[@melkor77751]

I saw this video today at sep 19 and 11:14 freaked me out

[@wknajafi]

great

[@toniaa-y3559]

The fireplace OS was cool tho

[@robertforster8984]

Windows 3.1 put Microsoft on the map.

[@pyrotheevilplatypus]

This is the first time I've ever heard GUI as an acronym instead of initialism.

[@ohneugoid]

1:03 I miss the exclamation mark...

[@aaronwtr1150]

Do a crashcourse on Nanotechnology

[@papapalpetine1328]

4:50 That programming language is Lua, isn't it?

[@SevenDeMagnus]

Cool

[@natedunn51]

It's the world greatest point and click adventure

[@ElgonEx]

The bob interface shocked me.

[@dankmemes-su5fk]

Cue me asking for veterinary, because I didn't realise you need to pick subjects to get into vet school

[@atomicbrain9401]

I've heard that you can create a GUI interface using Visual Basic to track a killer's IP address.