Picture-driven computing

Until the 1980s, using a computer program meant memorizing a lot of commands and typing them in a line at a time, only to get lines of text back. The graphical user interface, or GUI, changed that. By representing programs, program functions, and data as two-dimensional images -- like icons, buttons and windows -- the GUI made intuitive and spatial what had been memory intensive and laborious.

Read the whole article on Physorg

More from Physorg