{"id":45036,"date":"2018-09-24T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T09:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45036"},"modified":"2018-09-23T11:14:32","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T15:14:32","slug":"verity-stob-on-early-gui-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/09\/24\/verity-stob-on-early-gui-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Verity Stob on early GUI experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Verity Stob&#8221; began writing about technology issues three decades back. She reminisces about some things that have changed and others that are still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2018\/09\/20\/verity_stob_column_september\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">irritatingly the same<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s 30 years since <em>.EXE Magazine<\/em> carried the first Stob column; this is its <del datetime=\"2018-09-23T15:00:12+00:00\">pearl<\/del> Perl anniversary. Rereading article #1, a spoof self-tester in the <em>Cosmo<\/em> style, I was struck by how distant the world it invoked seemed. For example:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Your program requires a disk to have been put in the floppy drive, but it hasn&#8217;t. What happens next?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The original answers, such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>e) the program crashes out into <acronym title=\"Microsoft Disk Operating System\">DOS<\/acronym>, leaving dozens of files open<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>would now need to be supplemented by<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>f) what&#8217;s &#8216;the floppy drive&#8217; already, Grandma? And while you&#8217;re at it, what is DOS? Part of some sort of DOS and DON&#8217;TS list?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I say: sufficient excuse to present some Then and Now comparisons with those primordial days of programming, to show how much things have changed &#8211; or not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1988<\/strong>: Drag-and-drop was a showy-offy but not-quite-satisfactory technology.<\/p>\n<p>My first DnD encounter was by proxy. In about 1985 my then boss, a wise and cynical old Brummie engineer, attended a promotional demo, free wine and nibbles, of an exciting new <acronym title=\"Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer\">WIMP<\/acronym> technology called <a href=\"http:\/\/toastytech.com\/guis\/gem11.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GEM<\/a>. Part of the demo was to demonstrate the use of the on-screen trash icon for deleting files.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Digital-Research-GEM-user-interface.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Digital-Research-GEM-user-interface.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"350\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-45037\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Digital-Research-GEM-user-interface.png 640w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Digital-Research-GEM-user-interface-150x82.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Digital-Research-GEM-user-interface-480x263.png 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to Graham&#8217;s gleeful report, he stuck up his hand at this point. &#8220;What happens if you drag the clock into the wastepaper basket?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>The answer turned out to be: the machine crashed hard on its arse, and it needed about 10 minutes embarrassed fiddling to coax it back onto its feet. At which point Graham&#8217;s arm went up again. &#8220;What happens if you drop the wastepaper basket into the clock?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Drag-ons &#8216;n&#8217; drag-offs<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>GEM may have been primitive, but it was at least consistent.<\/p>\n<p>The point became moot a few months later, when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.filfre.net\/2018\/07\/doing-windows-part-6-look-and-feel\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Apple won a look-and-feel lawsuit<\/a> and banned the GEM trashcan outright.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2018<\/strong>: Not that much has changed. Windows Explorer users: how often has your mouse finger proved insufficiently strong to grasp the file? And you have accidentally dropped the document you wanted into a deep thicket of nested server directories?<\/p>\n<p>Or how about touch interface DnD on a phone, where your skimming pinkie exactly masks from view the dragged thing?<\/p>\n<p>Well then.<\/p>\n<p>However, I do confess admiration for <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/atlassian\/react-beautiful-dnd\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this JavaScript library<\/a> that aims to make a dragging and dropping accessible to the blind. Can&#8217;t fault its ambition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Verity Stob&#8221; began writing about technology issues three decades back. She reminisces about some things that have changed and others that are still irritatingly the same: It&#8217;s 30 years since .EXE Magazine carried the first Stob column; this is its pearl Perl anniversary. Rereading article #1, a spoof self-tester in the Cosmo style, I was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[109,45,92],"class_list":["post-45036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-technology","tag-computers","tag-nostalgia","tag-software"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bIo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45038,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45036\/revisions\/45038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}