10.1 It's the content, stupid!

If you were born after the late 1970s, your first meaningful encounter with a computer was probably with a WIMPy ( Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers) personal computer. Your computer has always had a GUI where you would point at and click on small graphical images called icons. As far as you're concerned, Microsoft invented windows and menus and all the visual delights that make PCs so much fun.

The truth is that Microsoft didn't invent the WIMP user interface after all. Xerox yes, the copier people did. The Xerox Star, introduced in 1981 by Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (a.k.a. "Xerox PARC") was the first significant release of a product with a WIMP user interface. Other early systems, such as Smalltalk and the Alto, embodied some of the ideas found in the Star, but in the Star, the developers brought all of the elements together for the first time.

Many aspects of the Star system can still be seen in Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the various Linux GUI environments available today. The desktop metaphor, where the user is invited to view the screen objects as objects found on top of one's office desk, came from the Star. The use of bit-mapped displays, icons, and the mouse all originated in the Star's user interface.

Microsoft did not invent the World Wide Web, either. Tim Berners-Lee holds that distinction. His vision for the Web was based not on dreams of becoming a wealthy...