Xerox Star User Interface (1982) 2 of 2
Why Hacker News recommends it
Listed among historical GUI and Smalltalk videos and cited for early features such as math in word processing and the Mesa-programmed Star.
What it is
Second half of a demonstration of the 1982 Xerox Star user interface. It shows how the Star differed from the later Lisa and Mac interfaces, with strengths in networking and printing and little direct manipulation.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2013 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Cites vanderZwan · 2013-06 · on “German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens ”
"Abiword normally does not have built in facilities for mathematical formulas" The Xerox Alto had this in 1982[1]. NINETEEN FREAKING EIGHTY TWO. How is it possible that any WYSIWYG word processor is allowed to ship without this? [1] [this video]
Cites pjmlp · 2013-07 · on “Tangle: a JavaScript library for reactive documents”
Except the original Lisp and Smalltalk environments are much more than a simple REPL. Sometimes I wish people would learn about computing history. Presentation from Kalman Reti about Lisp Machines, check the interactivity starting at 00:44:00 and how to introduce mouse sensitive images at 01:00:00 [LINK] Xerox presentations about Smalltalk-80 [LINK] [LINK] [this video]
Cites pjmlp · 2014-04 · on “Shadow DOM”
Mainly videos Self [LINK] Xerox Star User Interface [LINK] [this video] Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk [LINK] The Smalltalk-80 Programming System [LINK] The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer [LINK] Symbolics Hypertext Document [LINK]
Cites pjmlp · 2014-06 · on “Web Starter Kit”
Self [LINK] Xerox Star User Interface [LINK] [this video] Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk [LINK] The Smalltalk-80 Programming System [LINK] The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer [LINK] Symbolics Hypertext Document [LINK] Warren Teitelman work at Xerox PARC [LINK] The Mesa/Cedar programming environment [LINK] Steve Jobs internal demo of NeXTSTEP 3, [LINK] Alan Kay on Xerox PARC work [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
Cites pjmlp · 2017-02 · on “Grappling with Go”
Faire enough, so prepare for an history lesson. :) Mesa/Cedar was created at Xerox PARC, as an extension of the Xerox Star 8010 system, which was programmed in Mesa, the language that inspired Niklaus Wirth to create Modula-2. [LINK] [LINK] [this video] Mesa evolved to Mesa/Cedar, which allowed for automatic memory management via reference counting and a tracing collector for the cycles. [LINK] The environment had a REPL and debugger inspired by the Smalltalk and Lisp systems at Xerox. Think of Swift Playgrounds, kind of. This system inspired Niklaus Wirth to create Oberon, which you can read about in his book, about how the OS was built. [LINK] In 2013, Niklaus Wirth revised the language and upd
Cites DonHopkins · 2022-01 · on “Prime Video Uses WebAssembly”
I share that passion too! Most people grossly underestimate how difficult it is to implement something as seemingly simple as a text field or menu, when there are so many hidden issues and techniques that make them easy to use because you don't notice all the support you're getting. Well implemented user interfaces have polish that makes their inherent complexity invisible, but polish is actually millions of tiny little scratches, not just a clean simple perfectly flat surface. Accessibility and internationalization are two crucial dimensions that most people forget about (especially non-sensory/motor-impaired Americans), which each add huge amounts of unavoidable complexity to text fields a