Consider for a minute the humble scrollbar. This pillar of the graphical user interface has freed us from the spacial constraints imposed upon us by the printed page. It has returned us to the first ever writing format- the unpaginated, continuous flow of scrolls written on Papyrus.
For web users the scrollbar is a key member of the WIMP family (windows, icons, menus, pointing devices), components of the graphical user interface (GUI) that revolutionized home computing in the early eighties. These tactile titans of the graphics world propelled us from the flatlands of the binary age to the shimmering pastures of the hyaline age: glossy buttons and drop shadows, things you could grip, drag, collapse, caress and poke with your pointing device.
For web designers the scrollbar has become a yardstick for usability with battle lines being drawn between the champions of ‘long scrolling pages’, and the advocates of ‘everything above the fold’. And lets not forget the ultimate web pariah- the horizontal scrollbar- an axis too far for the impatient content consumer.
But now it seems that the scrollbar could be an endangered species. Leaked screenshots from Steve Jobs new Mac OS X presentation sent ripples of horror through the blogosphere. There was something missing. A six pixel by infinity gash in the interface marked the scene of the crime. Somebody had removed the scrollbar.
As it turned out the scrollbar was still there but it had been relegated to a mere visual aid, only visible when using other forms of scrolling- fingers on a trackpad or the roller on a mouse.
This is a landmark design moment because it marks the point where the ‘graphical user interface’ is starting to be usurped by the ‘gesture user interface’. Why jab your pointer sideways to move up and down when the flick of a fingertip can do it all? Why restrict interaction to the single coordinates provided by a mouse when you can use the infinite range of movement provided by your own body motion?
Our need to ‘thingify’ the virtual- to remodel the flat and abstract with the three dimensional and familiar will always be there but multi touch technologies and motion sensors give us the type of screen control that make the old staples of the GUI redundant. We can now grip, drag, collapse, caress and poke with the very things that bore those motions in the first place. The scrollbar has been killed by our bare hands.
The first ever GUI as seen on Xerox Star computer in 1981
Apple popularised the GUI on the Lisa Computer launched in 1983.
Microsofts XBox Kinect. Sensors do away with the controller altogether. Human movement is the interface. Launched in Nov 2010.
Comments
22 November 10
By: Paul Kitcatt
Future tech
As ever, gaming leads the way. My son (10) says the Wii is now totally out, the PS Move has the best games and is the most accurate in reading movement, but the XBox Kinect is the one they all want, because you don't need any kind of controller. He doesn't have any of them, by the way.
But where is voice recognition? We all know the destination is HAL 9000 (the computer in 2001), so when are we getting there?
08 December 10
By: Angus
Voice recognition
There's voice recognition on the Xbox Kinect and Playstation Move and mixed reports coming back about their accuracy. The Kinect only supports English language at the moment which is disappointing. Not quite Hal 9000 but getting there.