| Brandon | Time Machine: A journey to 2007Now that I've decided to do the weekly "GUI of the Week" column, I've come up with another column idea! This time the column is "Time Machine", where I'll post something that I find archived away for you all to see.
Today I found a post that I wrote for QB Express #23,
Best GUIs of the Modern Era
Written By Brandon Cornell
I decided to write this because me and my friend were talking about the best English GUIs of the Modern era (Post 2004) and I thought I would write something about all the GUIs and their influence and power. I wrote comments on all the GUIs and I contacted a few people to also comment on some. The rank is based on the opinions of me, Todd Suess, and Murray Parkinson and a recent poll at BrandonCornell.com.
1.Fun500 GUI-My GUI.It had humble beginnings, as I didn't know much graphics or fancy commands, it started as a spaghetti coded keyboard controlled desktop with a few crappy apps. Then evolved to have a mouse and sidebar to windows and objects to where it is know in FB with a Scripter. It was the first BASIC GUI to load BMP themes. In GUI Awards 2005 Fun500 GUI 1.0 took 2nd."It rocks"-Murray Parkinson, Author of DC-OS
2.M-OS-Has been around for some time. It was dropped by the original author and picked up by Todd Suess. It only can run one app at a time and is ridiculed for using to much of other peoples code. In GUI Awards 2005 M-OS 2005 took 1st."It sucks"-
Murray Parkinson, Author of DC-OS
"Since 2003, I've been obsessed with GUIs. Like a painting or a work of art, GUIs have always fascinated me with their user interfaces, colors, widgets, and much more.
It all began in 2003 when I first found QB 4.5. I already knew there was a QBasic, but I knew it couldn't do much since it was more of an interpreter than a compiler. So when I had QB 4.5, I wanted to look for websites that had code for it. And I came across GUIs such as QBF OS 99, M-OS, GIMI, and more. Some other GUIs were made in other programming languages such as C++, Pascal, and even Assembly. I wanted them all. Around the summer of 2003, I had almost every GUI I could find on the internet. There were some that once existed but were no longer available which kept driving me to find them even more.
Around the beginning of 2004, I became interested with the "anatomy" of a GUI in QB. So I found M-OS, which was my favorite, and looked at the source code to see how it worked. I tried compiling it in QB, but I couldn't get it to work since I wasn't using any libraries when loading QB. So when I got it to work, it was just graphics and no interface. Since M-OS depended on a mouse to function, there was none implemented since I didn't know how to load the QB library in M-OS. After finding another GUI's source with instructions (i.e. loading QB with "/L") I finally got the GUIs to work. Some of them I had never found out what they looked like since I didn't know about the "/L" switch in QB, and so seeing them for the first time was like a surprise and excitement you might receive on your birthday or Christmas.
When I finally got my own internet connection, I start surfing the web for GUIs and their websites. I found out that most were unchanged since 2001 or just ceased development. I was really disheartened since I thought more GUIs would've been developed. So I decided to use M-OS as my project and improve the desktop and interface. In the beginning, it wasn't much I started by adding little things like background loading BMPs and adding WAV-audio functionality. They improved the interface and the architecture of the GUI, and so I decided to stick with M-OS. Another reason why I chose M-OS was because on the M-OS website (no longer exists) the original creator, Jonathan Thorpe, along with a few other people had created the GUI to the point where it was a fully-functional, high-resolution and powerful GUI with 256 colors, themes, and many programs. I never found that copy of M-OS. So my goal was to make a GUI like it."
-Todd Suess on GUIs and his GUI, M-OS
3.Costa-There from the Start. It started good and just got better. But like most Modern era GUIs never got out of BETA stages. Its sitehttp://jacobpalm.dk was the most popular hang-out."a GUI developed by Jacob Christensen, and eventually he started JacobPalm.dk. His website was simple and attracted some users, but not many. Eventually, he added a community and a place to show your GUIs. And after being one of the first members of JacobPalm.dk, the site grew and became a GUI hub of the internet. This also drove me to open up my own GUI reviews site to share the GUIs I had found and keep them in one central place for people to download"-Todd Suess on Costa
4.Gopos-Nice GUI with a few good programs, that never really had its own web-site.
5.EnSpireMe-A inspiring GUI it had a lot of new features such as dithering.
6.DC-OS-Fairly new GUI based on G-Control took a lot of ideas from other GUI and incorporated them, such as BMP themes like Fun500 GUI and using other peoples programs like M-OS. It was drop recently."It rocks"-Murray Parkinson, Author of DC-OS
7.Linster OS-One of those GUIs were the Author was new to GUI coding and wanted fun. It got better over time but never got out of Betas. Later versions were based on QB object rebuild. It was a lot like 9OS.
8.Edge-Great windowing engine but nor much else drop as a BETA was picked up by Fun550 and they had no releases. Version 2.0 was started but never finished
9.9OS-Another GUI were the author was new to GUI coding and wanted fun. It got better over time but never got out of Betas. It had a dark red theme. It was a lot like Linster OS.
10.iOS-A newer GUI that was not advertised much around the community but worked good despite having themes of only 2 colors.
11.Atlantis-Was going to be a revolutionary GUI but never was ready for a public release
12.Teddy-Was going to be a powerful scripting engine, but never had a release.
13.Pheonix-The brainchild of me, it had a crazy colorful theme and had only 1 beta release that was coded entirely by Todd Suess.
14.OFOS-A beginners GUI and looked a lot like Fun500 GUI 2005 or 2005 Bronze. It has some neat programs but no mouse.
15.Alien GUI-The project after OFOS and had one release with objects and mouse control."Over the years, GUIs such as Fun500 GUI, M-OS, Costa, and Edge all improved greatly. Although their development may be slow or near the edge of becoming extinct, they will live on and inspire another person to find QB and start coding."- Todd Suess, author of M-OS
If you think this was rigged because my own GUI was at the top you are wrong. Todd Suess gave Fun500 GUI 2nd and M-OS 1st in this vote. Murray gave Fun500 GUI 1st and M-OS 6th in this vote. I gave Fun500 GUI 2nd and M-OS 1st in my vote.
Looking back now this is an interesting list, most of the GUIs (with the exceptions of Costa, Fun500 and DC-OS) didn't have any releases after that article was published. However since then GUIs like Q-Step, ASGARD, Cobra, Viper, Dick's GUI, KAOS, and FAROS have come along to keep the community fresh. | 2013-02-21 | 1:13 PM |
