Welcome to guidebook, a website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them. Site last updated on 6th October 2006: two articles about Xerox: “Xerox xooms toward the office of the future” and “The lab that ran away from Xerox”, and a funny essay about... the cow metaphor New set of posters with mouse pointers: The original trash can for Apple Lisa was supposed to have been an old, beat up alley trashcan, with the lid half open, flies buzzing around it and appropriate sounds as user put something inside. Threats and anonyms can finally stop. First Linux GUI has been added to the site and it certainly won’t be the last one. Red Hat Linux 9 defaults to nice and conservative, although unpolished at the edges GNOME 2.2 with Bluecurve theme. Check it out. The screens informing that Windows is shutting down (here: Windows 95, 98, XP Professional and Longhorn 4015) are so nicely done, one can’t happen but wonder whether it is so that user will be more eager to quickly relaunch the system again. “It promised to take the work out of work. The personal computer courted you with endless promises. It would do your job faster, make life easier, send you home happier. It would do the heavy lifting, you would do the heavy thinking. Alas, reality fell short of the dream.” That’s the beginning of a 20-year-old advertisement of Visi On, a commercial GUI for PCs predating both Mac OS and Windows. If this fragment still rings true, check out the rest of the ad.
	Copyright © 2002-2006 Marcin Wichary.