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| Brandon | Time Machine: Why people write GUIsThis is an article written by Jacob in QB Express #13 (August 2005), where he interviewed the then active GUI programmers to find out what made them write GUIs. Why Do People Make GUI's? Written by Jacob Palm This is not really an article, it's just some of the active GUI programmers who shares their reasons to do GUI programming. Brandon Cornell (Fun500 and Pheonix) I make Fun500 for 2 reasons: The Main Reason: Enjoyment The Second Reason: I hope it becomes a PC cometitor someday LOL !! Pheonix I make for the same reasons. Even though the progect is very slow!! MystikShadows (ErgonOS) The main reason why I'm making a GUI is because I for one am tired of the the way Windows, Linux KDE, you name them tend to make you work. I take it this way, if I am sitting at my computer, what do I want to do? do I want to open a word processor to write an article or do I want to write an article using a word processor. That's the main difference between ErgonOS and the likes of windows. There's many different ways to endup with a document in a word processor, and ErgonOS is my way to accomplish a task such as that one. When windows first started, I wasn't too keen about it (yes I've dealt with windows 1.0 all the way to windows XP I use Windows because the industry still wants it and to be competitive in my career choice you have to code for the OS or GUI that's hot in demand :-) especially if you plan to sell your product in any way. But if I had no commercial reason to use windows, it wouldn't be on my hard drive. Linux is an alternative to this but when you look at X Windows, Gnome, KDE, Motif and lesstif (the free alternative to Motif) and the others, they all are based on the way windows work. So for me, I'm sticking to windows because it's still more popular than Linux and more software are made for it. I do plan to make a dual boot soon though ;-) with Linux just in case. But as far as GUI is concerned, everything is application and icon based. And when you think about that concept, it's the best way to waste resources. Because all applications have to supply all parts of their applications. In my case, each type of document will load just the resources it needs in order to perform their tasks and nothing else. And since each document will work on a stack based resource handling, ridding the system of an application's resources will be as easy as ending a sub and killing it's local variables. To me, this is a better way to work with your files. The GUI will supply the Global resources, like Hardware access, clipboard, printer drivers (yes I plan on making my own ;-). and the application will only need to supply what they need from those resources to do their job. There, that's my vision and reason for making my own GUI :-) ysft12 When I develop a GUI, I learn alot of new things. There are different programs and routines you have to make. Its also fun because you get to work with graphics and stuff. I have created some GUIs in the past. GUI programming got me so interested, that it will probably hard to stop GUI programming. To be really interested in GUI programming, all you have to do is start creating your own GUIs! Steve (Linster OS) If Windows made it with 1.01 and that was extremly simple, then i thought i could make something simlar to it but better. And that I always wanted to sell a desktop enviroment with my own branding just like Microgoof did. Todd Suess (Millennium OS) The reason why I work on M-OS is because I think it is a unique GUI from most. I noticed M-OS when I was in 6th Grade. I noticed QBF OS, also written by the previous author of M-OS. However, QBF OS had no code with it, and M-OS was open source. M-OS was similar in design to QBF OS but had a completely different interface. I liked M-OS since it looked a lot like Windows, and I was fascinated with its speed and compliance. A couple glitches appeared, but overall, it was unique and user friendly. In 7th Grade, I used it in a science fair to demonstrate how programming works. Some people saw it and thought it was Linux, but I told them that it was a friendly DOS GUI called Millennium OS. In 8th Grade, I noticed many GUI reviews websites were going offline, and that QBasic GUIs were starting to disappear from the web. I thought, "Why don't I work on my own GUI to contribute to the QBasic community?" I started work on M-OS in the beginning of March 2004 and finally launched a website on July 2004. I work on M-OS since it is a unique GUI, and the author is very fascinated by my work on his experimental GUI for QBasic. I know M-OS will never meet the competition of GUIs today or OSes, but I enjoy working on it since I learn new ideas and tricks when coding it. My goal is to make M-OS as user friendly and as advanced as QBasic's limits. Jacob Palm (Costa) Of course I'll also tell you my own reasons for making my GUI. The reason I make my GUI is mostly for the fun of it, but there's more to it than that. I have an old laptop with MS-DOS 6, and I thought it could be an interresting idea to make a GUI myself. I started 4 years ago, and I'm not done yet (I doubt I'll ever be, there's always things to optimize, features to add and such). I also learn a lot about computers when I make my GUI. I also make my own GUI because I'm tired of Windows, I've been running Windows since 1994 so a little change wouldn't hurt. After I saw Linux some years ago I thought that maybe I could make a GUI, too. I searched for GUI's on the internet and trembled overhttp://mcchome.hypermart.net/ which, at the time, was the biggest GUI review site around. I looked at a lot of the GUI's, and decided to use QBasic for my GUI. So I started out right away. Suddenly HyperMart closed http://mcchome.hypermart.net/, and all the reviews disappeared. That's when I decided to make my own GUI review site, though it took me some years to get a site up and running. Well, to sum it up: I make my GUI because I think it's fun, and because I need a GUI for some MS-DOS computer I have and don't want to run Windows or Linux. Visit Jacob Palm's GUI Site: JacobPalm.dk | 2013-04-17 | 2:00 PM |
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