What Interfaces MeanA History and Sociology of Computer Windows

摘要

This poster presents a cursory look at the history of windows in Graphical User Interfaces. It examines the controversy between tiling and overlapping window managers and explains that controversy's sociological importancewindows are control devices, enabling their users to manage their activity and attention. It then explores a few possible reasons for the relative disappearance of windowing in recent computing devices. It concludes with a recapitulative typology.