Window (computing)
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In computing, a window is a visual area containing some kind of user interface. It usually has a rectangular shape. It displays the output of and allows input of one or more processes.
Windows are primarily associated with graphical displays, where they can be manipulated with a mouse cursor.
A graphical user interface (GUI) using windows as one of its main "metaphors" is called a windowing system.
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[edit] Properties
Windows are two dimensional objects arranged on a plane called the desktop. They can be resized, moved, hidden, restored or closed.
Windows can be composed of other windows. Those windows are either arranged into a mosaic (for example, the text editor Emacs) or they may overlap. When two windows overlap the upper window is usually opaque.
One program can have multiple windows. For example in a text-editing program, a user might benefit from working with several text files available at once. Those "child" windows "containing" text files can either be left separate from the main window (see Metapad) or be encapsulated under the main "parent" window (see Notepad++).
[edit] History
The idea was developed at the Stanford Research Institute (led by Douglas Engelbart). They used non-overlapping tiled windows.
Research continued at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center / PARC (led by Alan Kay). They used overlapping windows.
At 80's the term "WIMP", which stands for window, icon, menu, pointer, has been coined at PARC.
Apple had worked with PARC briefly at that time. Apple developed an interface based on PARC's interface. It was first used on Apple's Lisa and later Macintosh computers. Microsoft was developing office applications for the "Mac" at that time. They based their windowing system Windows on Apple's system.
Overlapping systems have become far more common than non-overlapping systems since then.
[edit] Window managers
The part of a windowing system which manages these operations is called a window manager.
Most graphical user interfaces have windows (sometimes called widget...). Those interfaces are called WIMP. For example:
- DEC Windows (for VMS)
- X Window System (for GNU & Unix-like systems)
- Microsoft Windows and Sun's OpenWindows
[edit] See also
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