Chapter 18: Designing For the Desktop

This chapter I learned that modern desktop appearance came from the Xerox Alto,  which is an experimental computer system . There were 4 major pillars of the desktop UI paradigm: windows, icons, menus (and other widgets), and pointer, or WIMP for short.  There were many reasons for the design which included documents being able to be transferred electronically between workstations; printed, stored etc.

Steve Jobs then created the Lisa, which included drop down menus, new visuals and graphical idioms and later the Macintosh was created so it could be more affordable for everyone, the design of it was iconic. It had the primary window that stored documents that can be created and share while the secondary window had the functions and properties.

I know of window states being able to for minimize and maximize, but the pluralized state is that in-between condition where the window is neither an icon nor maximized to cover the entire screen. If done correctly, it can give users better access to occasionally used information and functionality without requiring them to install every tool they may need on their computers.

Other important idioms and features discussed was Mark Menu Items, Disabled Menu items, Menus, Icons, Checked Marks, Access Keys, Cascading menus and monocline groupings, tool bars, Tool tips, movable toolbars.

  The mouseleft button is used for “primary direct-manipulation functions, such as triggering controls, making selections, drawing, and so on and the right were for actions considered extra or optional like clicking and dragging.Mutual exclusion is when a selection is made and anything else selected is unmade, 2D graphical objects in drawing applications can be clicked and dragged while 3D are the outcome from 2D idioms and used for animations etc.