The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN people point to it as a primary-source look at Star's interface design, especially its philosophy of fewer commands without fewer functions.
What it is
A Computer History Museum recording of the final demonstration of the Xerox Star, the early graphical user interface workstation. It is a long demo session that shows the design thinking behind desktop, icons and windows.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2014 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Cites pjmlp · 2014-04 · on “Shadow DOM”
Mainly videos Self [LINK] Xerox Star User Interface [LINK] [LINK] Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk [LINK] The Smalltalk-80 Programming System [LINK] The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer [this video] Symbolics Hypertext Document [LINK]
Cites pjmlp · 2014-06 · on “Web Starter Kit”
Self [LINK] Xerox Star User Interface [LINK] [LINK] Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk [LINK] The Smalltalk-80 Programming System [LINK] The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer [this video] 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 kps · 2015-10 · on “Engineers Build Ugly Products”
And current designers and product managers build crippled products. “Star had many fewer commands than today's systems, and it didn't do it by having fewer functions; it just had fewer commands .” — Dave Smith, Xerox Star human factors designer, in the ‘Final Demo’ [this video]
Cites kps · 2016-06 · on “Too Many Knobs”
“Star had many fewer commands than today’s systems, and it didn’t do it by having fewer functions. It just had fewer commands.” — Dave Smith¹ at The Final Demonstration of the Xerox ‘Star’ Computer² Most UX designers are not as good as David Smith; they worship Apple/Jobs' “function follows form” misunderstanding of the Star GUI, and think you need to remove functionality in order to remove complexity. ¹ [LINK] ² video: [this video] text: [LINK]
Cites kps · 2017-06 · on “Is the keyboard faster than the mouse?”
> you have two hands. Every watch ‘the mother of all demos’⁰? Engelbart's system was designed to be used with one hand on the mouse and the other on the chordset. Xerox followed this with the Alto, and on to the Star¹, eventually dropping the chordset but with the same model: the mouse and the left-side function key block worked together.² ⁰ [LINK] ¹ [LINK] ² [this video]
Cites kps · 2017-09 · on “Refresh Is Sacred”
> The easiest way to achieve that is simply to remove functionality The easiest way, yes. I am reminded again of the point made by Dave Smith, one of the Xerox Star human factors designers, at the ‘Final Demo’¹: “Star had many fewer commands than today's systems, and it didn't do it by having fewer functions — it just had fewer commands .” PARC weren't trying to make things easy on themselves . Genericity is hard. Orthogonality is hard. Design is hard. (It's unfortunate that Steve Jobs either didn't understand what he saw, or didn't care, and popularized a Potemkin village imitation.) ¹ [this video] (The particular session starts around 54:30.)
Cites kps · 2019-10 · on “Simple Does Not Mean Ugly”
> I've watched both sandbag good design because there was no percieved business value more than once. Riffing on the article title: Simple Does Not Mean Deficient. “Star had many fewer commands than today’s systems, and it didn’t do it by having fewer functions. It just had fewer commands.” — Dave Smith at The Final Demonstration of the Xerox ‘Star’ Computer (video: [this video] text: [LINK] )
Cites pjmlp · 2020-05 · on “Advanced Programming Languages (2009)”
Anything based on the workstation concepts explored at Xerox PARC, and further pursued at ETHZ, TI and Genera. Bitsavers has all the necessary papers and manuals, and computer museum as well. Here are some video sessions. "Yesterday's Computer of Tomorrow: The Xerox Alto │Smalltalk-76 Demo" [LINK] "Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk" [LINK] "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" [LINK] "The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' computer" [this video] The end of the road from Plan 9, Inferno. [LINK] [LINK]