Java Graphical user interface (GUI) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Java Graphical user interface (GUI) - Essay Example In the early 1930s, Vannevar Bush first envisioned of a device he called a â€Å"memex,† which was visualized like a â€Å"desk with two touch screen graphical displays, a keyboard, and a scanner attached to it† (Reimer). During that time, there was no way to execute his ideas and his concepts caught little attention. It was not until after the Second World War that those computing machines that are programmable were produced. Bush revived his memex desk concept and, in 1945, he published it in his article in Atlantic Monthly, entitled â€Å"As We May Think† (Reimer). This was the inspiration of the young Douglas Englebart, the pioneer of the graphical user interface. In 1948, Douglas Englebart finished a degree in electrical engineering. While working at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, he began developing the On-Line System, â€Å"which incorporated a mouse-driven cursor and multiple windows† (Szturc). Xerox Corporations Palo Alto Research Center designed the first graphical user interface in the 1970s using the â€Å"WIMP (windows, icons, menus, and pointers)† model (Szturc). In 1981, Xerox 8010 Star system was released commercially. Several units were released after the Star system; nevertheless, the first commercially successful GUI was that of the Macintosh, released in 1984. The widely used Microsoft Windows (MS Windows) was sculpted in 1985, modeled after the Mac OS GUI. Two years after, Apple introduced the first color GUI, the Mac II. MS Windows 3.0 was released into the market in 1990, the advent of the popularity of the Windows interface series. Java is a general-purpose programming language. Its features are best suitable for Web-based use. Graphical user interfaces work best for Java applications designed for a wide range of users, and for Java-based applications that require the display of data. Through the Abstract Windowing Toolkit, or AWT, Java supports a graphical user interface development. AWT