Seminar week 6: Graphical UIs for real

Overview

For this week’s seminar, we’ll learn about how the operating system actually implements come of the features we’re accustomed to seeing from a graphical interface.

Room assignments: We will split into two rooms again. We will likely use the same room assignments as previous weeks, but please watch Edstem for an announcement (we’re planning to revisit the roster and may re-shuffle, now that shopping period has ended).

Assigned work: Since this is a short week, and since the material we want to discuss is based on Wednesday’s lecture, we have a short assignment, described below, just to seed a larger discussion during seminar. We expect that the assignment should take around 15 minutes to complete–please don’t spend more time than this!

As usual, please submit a brief response in the form below, along with any questions you have. Your responses are due Thursday, October 15 at 11:59pm.

“Reading”

We recommend waiting to work on this until until after Lecture 10 on Wednesday, October 14, when we'll introduce the principles for thinking about graphical interfaces.

Take a look at this screenshot of a desktop UI from a once-popular OS. Then, spend around 15 minutes brainstorming:

  • Starting from what we discussed in lecture, what other features does an operating system need to support a graphical interface like this?
  • In particular, of the things that you see what parts do you think the operating system might be responsible for, and how (briefly) might they work?

Background: The screenshot is an early screenshot of Windows Vista, which was released in 2007. Vista introduced a number of UI features that were very innovative at the time, and needed new OS support to do it. We’ve inherited most of these features in our operating systems today, and we take many of them for granted!

What you should turn in

By Thursday, October 15 at 11:59pm, fill out this form with:

  • Your brief response to the brainstorming question above

  • Please ask us a question about graphical UIs (either from looking at the screenshot, what we discussed in class, or otherwise)

Once again, your goal is not to design every UI feature you see in the screenshot, but to start off thinking about what else might be needed to make a “real” user interface. We’ll use this, and your questions, as a starting point for our discussion.