What is Digg?65 Comments
- bixby1, on 12/12/2008, -1/+33I used his gadget to digg the crap out of this.
- franklymister, on 12/12/2008, -0/+16He's always been a hero of mine.
As a usability expert myself, his take on usability has been important to me as well. He never meant to stress usability over usefulness, a lesson I've taken to heart.
His famous quote was "If ease of use was the only valid criterion, people would stick to tricycles and never try bicycles."
I strongly encourage anyone who's interested to go check out some of his other designs, such as the chord keyboard that he intended to be used with the mouse.
http://www.cedmagic.com/history/first-computer-mou ... - franklymister, on 12/12/2008, -1/+14Karl Rove called from the year 2000, he wants his ***** gag line back.
- DulcetTone, on 12/12/2008, -1/+13Al Gore did play an important part in advancing the science of computing (Al Gore-ithms) and also literature (Al-e-Gorey).
- codyman, on 12/12/2008, -0/+11Everyone seems to be on this touchscreen bandwagon but (don't get me wrong, touchscreen is great for mobile applications) for my day to day PC, keyboard + mouse ftw (I don't want to have to sit there touching the screen all day, seems like more work / less efficient in my book...)
- painting, on 12/12/2008, -0/+10I don't understand the hype with these touch screen computers, its suppose to be innovative. But you're using more time and energy utilizing your entire arm. When you can just use a mouse to do the same task with less energy in a fraction of the time.
- LawScholar, on 06/25/2009, -4/+10For the porn he has allowed me to surf, and the stunning rapidity with which he has allowed me to minimize that porn, I snap for Sir Douglas Engelbart my finest salute.
- Mujokan, on 12/12/2008, -1/+6Did you hear about the constipated mathematician? He worked it out with a pencil.
- franklymister, on 12/12/2008, -0/+4We'd have been using directional pads, joysticks, trackballs, and keyboards until the touchscreen came along, probably.
- nem0, on 12/12/2008, -0/+4I had to learn Fortran using punchcards. Thank you Mr. Engelbart.
- RegalBegal, on 12/12/2008, -0/+4I read "What the Doormouse Said: How the 60's Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer" by John Markoff and read about Doug.
Anyone on digg I'm pretty sure could enjoy this book. Very interesting. Augmentation of humans. - aboundingrhythm, on 12/12/2008, -1/+5yeah, whatever. I use a trackpad...bitch.
- franklymister, on 12/12/2008, -0/+3He's still alive.
- inactive, on 12/12/2008, -0/+3Tricycle quote, classic.
- alexkball, on 12/12/2008, -4/+6Thanks for giving me Carpal Tunnel, *****.
- aywwts4, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2Most keyboards came with an extended numpad which had a large trackball, the type you would see in an arcade bowling simulation. Its slower, less accurate, and we sure wouldn't be playing FPS games with them.
Adventure games and turn based strategy would have never died though. Really we can thank this man for the true FPS, the mouse made a genre possible (I still don't know how people play fps games with joypads, I really don't) - daddyrief, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2nice quote. i've always wanted to buy a modern chorded keyboard but i can't find one anywhere...
- sLydE, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2So wrong...yet so funny.
- Wilson, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2I'm a fan of the nipple mouse. I had a Tecra that had one; I quickly got used to it and I'm still more accurate with it than a trackpad. Additionally, fingers don't need to move from home row or make constant sweeping movements to move the cursor long distances.
- nem0, on 12/12/2008, -2/+4If I were Doug, I would have called it the "Engelbartron."
- Valyn, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2People just obsess of the new 'it thing.' Really the best art about touchscreen is the lack of space required. I mean, you already have a display, might as well use it for navigation as well. Outside of that, I could only think of specialized reasons for it.
- stonebone4, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2THANKS SKIP!!!!11
- skyshock1, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2Maybe it's just me, but I think it's kind of sad that the computing industry hasn't progressed beyond this type of interface for 40 years.
- Lebrun, on 12/13/2008, -0/+2Perhaps now we can stop hearing that crap about how Apple "invented" the mouse and the graphical interface.
- RogerStrong, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2The original IBM PC had a choice of high resolution monochrome of lower resolution color video cards. Both had circuitry, firmware and a connector for a light pen.
With almost everything already in place, you could build a light pen for about five bucks in hardware.
For the next ten years, just about every video card for the PC came with a light pen connector. (As a few pins on the card, not a connector on the back-plate.) Almost no-one ever knew they were there, let alone used them.
Then Microsoft Word came bundled with a mouse, and the following year the Mac was released, and that was it for light pens. - kkl3218, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2what about the person that invented the track stick? (i know, more of a laptop feature than desktop but still)
- Mujokan, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2That's interesting. I have seen pictures of the original mouse, but somehow I got it into my head that he worked at Xerox PARC (in Palo Alto near Stanford). According to Wikipedia, "Several of Engelbart's best researchers became alienated from him and left his organization for Xerox PARC, in part due to frustration, and in part due to differing views of the future of computing."
Anyway, he deserves respect for getting the ball rolling, so to speak.
I used to subscribe to Wired back in the Nineties when interface design was still kind of a hot topic among geeks. These days I think the novelty has worn off, compared to the kind of articles you used to see back then. Still it can make or break companies. The problem is (in my experience) engineers often don't want to know when you try to tell them interface IP can be as important as tech IP. /rambling - AROZ, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2That was smooth.
- theGoodness, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2What about his arch nemesis Sir Mortimer Hotkey.
- AROZ, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2Why don't you submit an article about him.
- AdmiralAcbar, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2I just found out something amazing about my trackpad. One finger to left click. Two to middle click. Three to right click! I'm on an MSI M677 Megabook. Cool!
- L0NER, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2The creator of the mouse is visonary.
Creator of the Wacom tablet is a god. - kkl3218, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2...giving cred to Ted Selker inventor of the Pointing Stick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_stick - Valyn, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2We still drive cars right? How long has that been? Ford's was in 1896. The first was Guido da Vigevano's in 1335. It was a windmill type drive to gears and thus to wheels.
http://www.ausbcomp.com/%7Ebbott/cars/carhist.htm
They still evolve though. I mean, when Engelbart created the mouse, who would have believed any ideas about lasers? - franklymister, on 12/12/2008, -0/+2That sounds pretty good. Sketch that up and put it out!
- franklymister, on 12/12/2008, -0/+1The BAT is a pretty well-respected one: http://www.infogrip.com/product_view.asp?RecordNum ...
- aserer511, on 12/12/2008, -1/+2I think there needs to be a revolution in pointer devices. trackpads can get dirty and take up space laptops won't soon need. how about a small cup you place your finger in. when you move your finger to the left in the depression, the mouse goes, force-appropriate, to the left. the left click is that the entire cup depresses. right click is done by a small button to the right of the cup, scrolling is done by mouse like scroll wheel, to the right of that button
- RogerStrong, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1>> I think you have your
>> time line reversed
Microsoft Word for DOS came bundled with mouse in 1983, the year before the Mac was released. This is significant - the Mac may have been flashy, but Word had the numbers.
>> After developing on the
>> Mac, Microsoft then started
>> their "Windows project".
Incorrect.
It was Xerox who pioneered the GUI. Both Gates and Jobs got to see it, and both decided to produce their own GUI.
Windows was demonstrated at Comdex the year BEFORE the Mac was released. (It was originally supposed to be on the shelf by April 1984.) Once the Mac was shown to the public, they changed Windows to look *less* like it.
The Mac was released first, but then Windows was a more ambitious project: They wanted it to run on a variety of computers, video cards (heck, the Mac didn't even support *color* until years later), screen resolutions, mice, ports, etc. from all different manufacturers. And they wanted it to be backward compatible with existing software.
>> Entrusted with prototype
>> Mac hardware and inside
>> access to Apple’s
>> development tools
This helped them develop software for Apple.
As for Windows development, they had their own tools.
Really though, what happenned was the hardware matured enough for a GUI, and everyone started writing one. Digital Research's GEM desktop was released before Windows. VisiCorp's VisiOn was released before Windows AND the Mac. Commodore, Atari, ACT and others all produced GUIs at the same time.
The Windows/Mac issue is just yet another "Apple was first" myth.
Bonus trivia:
Q: Who produced the first Unix-based OS released by Apple for it's computers?
A: Microsoft. - franklymister, on 12/12/2008, -0/+1There were pen tablets, as well. Don't forget those.
You could probably do a FPS with a pen tablet. - mrBitch, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1RE: " Then Microsoft Word came bundled with a mouse, and the following year the Mac was released, and that was it for light pens. "
I think you have your time line reversed around the wrong way. The Mac was out BEFORE Microsoft released the GUI version of Word.
There was a "Word for DOS" but that was BEFORE Microsoft had started working on Windows... MS Word at that time did NOT use a mouse.
The first mouse driven version of Microsoft Word was released on the Apple Mac. After developing on the Mac, Microsoft then started their "Windows project".
" Entrusted with prototype Mac hardware and inside access to Apple’s development tools, Microsoft made an agreement with Apple in 1981 not to ship any mouse-based products of its own until a year after Apple introduced the Mac.
In exchange, Apple promised to give Microsoft a rare opportunity to enter the competitive desktop applications market using its entirely new Mac platform as a launching pad. " - affordableweb, on 12/15/2008, -0/+1ha ha.good one. i use a laptop. is that still his?
- mrBitch, on 12/15/2008, -0/+1@Lebrun RE: " Apple may have "independently developed" (more redeveloped) the moving window concept, but thos concepts already existed long before Apple even existed, "
Concepts? Yes, you are correct. But Apple was the FIRST company to actually sell a product to the consumer that had a GUI based interface to it's OS.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars/4
" Many former Xerox PARC engineers found new jobs with Apple, and set about to recreate their work on the Alto and Smalltalk but on a product that would actually see commercial release and potentially become very popular.
Work on Apple's next-generation Lisa computer, which had started life as a traditional text-based command line computer for business use, was transformed by the influx of PARC people. Steve Jobs himself became a convert to the GUI religion when his employees arranged a grand tour for him of the PARC facility. The Lisa would henceforth become a graphical computer...
The Lisa team eventually settled on an icon-based interface where each icon indicated a document or an application, and developed the first pull-down menu bar, where all menus appeared at the very top line of the screen.
Other innovations from the Lisa team included the idea of checkmarks appearing next to selected menu items, and the concept of keyboard shortcuts for the most frequently used menu commands.
The Lisa also changed some PARC conventions, such as eschewing proportionally-sized scroll bars for fixed-height ones, and added new conventions, such as a trash can for dragging documents scheduled for deletion, and the idea of "graying out" menu options if they were not currently available. The three-button mouse, which had been changed to a two-button design in the Star for simplicity, was further simplified to have only one button for the Lisa. As the interface required at least two actions for each icon (selecting and running) the concept of double-clicking was invented to provide this functionality.
Double-clicking would later become a standardized way for all GUIs to launch a program, even those with multiple-button mice." - Lebrun, on 12/16/2008, -0/+1Unless you're a marketroid, first product mean exactly dick.
- mrBitch, on 12/15/2008, -0/+1@Roger RE : " Microsoft Word for DOS came bundled with mouse in 1983, the year before the Mac was released. This is significant - the Mac may have been flashy, but Word had the numbers.
>> After developing on the
>> Mac, Microsoft then started
>> their "Windows project".
Incorrect. "
WOW, you REALLY screwed up your PC history.
Microsoft WAS contracted by Apple to develop Word on a GUI based OS that Microsoft DID NOT HAVE.
There was even a famous letter from Bill Gates asking if he could license Apple's OS and sell it on PCs.
Microsoft's FIRST TASTE of GUI based OS was on Apple gear.
As for :
" It was Xerox who pioneered the GUI. Both Gates and Jobs got to see it, and both decided to produce their own GUI. "
Wow, that is NOTHING like what really happened.
Apple was the FIRST company to actually sell a product to the consumer that had a GUI based interface to it's OS.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars/4
" Many former Xerox PARC engineers found new jobs with Apple, and set about to recreate their work on the Alto and Smalltalk but on a product that would actually see commercial release and potentially become very popular.
Work on Apple's next-generation Lisa computer, which had started life as a traditional text-based command line computer for business use, was transformed by the influx of PARC people. Steve Jobs himself became a convert to the GUI religion when his employees arranged a grand tour for him of the PARC facility. The Lisa would henceforth become a graphical computer...
The Lisa team eventually settled on an icon-based interface where each icon indicated a document or an application, and developed the first pull-down menu bar, where all menus appeared at the very top line of the screen.
Other innovations from the Lisa team included the idea of checkmarks appearing next to selected menu items, and the concept of keyboard shortcuts for the most frequently used menu commands.
The Lisa also changed some PARC conventions, such as eschewing proportionally-sized scroll bars for fixed-height ones, and added new conventions, such as a trash can for dragging documents scheduled for deletion, and the idea of "graying out" menu options if they were not currently available. The three-button mouse, which had been changed to a two-button design in the Star for simplicity, was further simplified to have only one button for the Lisa. As the interface required at least two actions for each icon (selecting and running) the concept of double-clicking was invented to provide this functionality.
Double-clicking would later become a standardized way for all GUIs to launch a program, even those with multiple-button mice." - JigoroKano, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1And you never run out of pad.
- Lebrun, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1I'm no saying Apple claims to have invented any of those things; when I said "hearing" I meant comments from other people, with many different levels of knowledge.
Apple may have "independently developed" (more redeveloped) the moving window concept, but thos concepts already existed long before Apple even existed, you can see "The Mother of All Demos", as well as the Xerox Alto, and other Unix graphical interfaces which predate both XWindow and the Mac. - mrBitch, on 12/13/2008, -0/+1You are confused. Apple never claimed to have "invented" the mouse. Apple's claim to fame is selling the first consumer based computer with a mouse driven GUI based OS.
Every time you pick up a mouse and interact with your OS, you are doing so based on design concepts built into the very first GUI based OS, originated and created by Apple.
" Apple paid Xerox for its technology inspiration using a stock deal. Apple’s products weren’t based on a copy of Xerox code, nor did Apple have any code access.
The software Apple designed went well beyond what Xerox researchers had envisioned. For example, while Xerox originated the idea of the mouse and a bit-mapped display with windowed regions, Apple independently developed the ideas of direct interaction of movable windows, as well as the automatic redrawing of the background required as a window moved around on the screen." -
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