What interfaces mean: a history and sociology of computer windows

Authors:
Louis-Jean Teitelbaum
Affiliations:
Télécom ParisTech, Paris, France
Venue:
UIST '10 Adjunct proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
Year:
2010

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Abstract

This poster presents a cursory look at the history of windows in Graphical User Interfaces. It examines the controversy between tiling and overlapping window managers and explains that controversy's sociological importance: windows are control devices, enabling their users to manage their activity and attention. It then explores a few possible reasons for the relative disappearance of windowing in recent computing devices. It concludes with a recapitulative typology.