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Origin Of Software Design Ideas

Many tasks performed by software are adaptations of non- computer tasks, for example text processing and database management systems. These software applications have been refined and now provide capabilities that were not available to the general population.

Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)

During the development of the computer, the human interface was of secondary importance. Most input was by punched card and paper tape, the human readable output usually in the form of printed matter.

When the first monitors appeared, computer system display screens were basically text. The user activated the commands by typing in words such as ‘load’ to load a program and ‘run’ to run a program. The program interface was text and the keyboard became the main input device.

Between 1972 and 1973 the first operational Alto computer was completed by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre in California. The Alto had the first operating system to combine all the elements of the modern GUI. Theses features include a 3-button mouse, a bit-mapped display, graphical windows, icons and menus. The machine was not commercially available. The first system to sell a graphical user interface to the general public was Apple Computers with the Lisa in 1983.

1 Search Engines

The Internet is such a large unstructured store of information that it would be almost worthless was it not for search engines. The first Internet connections were text based, but there was a gradual demand for graphical material which led to the development of the browser. The early development of the Internet led to the need for quick searches of material held in many computers that were connected to this network. This resulted in the first search engines. The early search engines were Archie, WAIS and Gopher.

Archie was developed in the early 1990s to help find files on the networks forming the Internet. It obtained directory listings of all the files on thousands of sites around the world and put them in a database.

WAIS was developed as a source of information for big business and was able to be search by using questions in natural language (normal language such as English).

Gopher was developed by the University of Minnesota to help its staff and students by distributing campus information.

These search engines formed the basis for those that are available today.

2 New Approaches To Software

As the demand for computer software has grown, there have been an increasing number of original ideas. The form of the original program has been protected by copyright but the successful ideas have flourished and now may be found in many different forms. Among these applications are spreadsheets, web browsers and presentation software.

VisiCalc

The story of the spreadsheet began in 1978, when the program VisiCalc was launched for the Apple II computer. VisiCalc, short for ‘visible calculator’, was based on the paper spreadsheets used by businesses, but it had the advantage that calculations could be made automatically. The functions provided in VisiCalc were minimal when compared with modern spreadsheets. As the spreadsheets developed, further functions were added, increasing its application to tasks outside finance. The spreadsheet, more than any other application, took the personal computer from being an enthusiast’s ‘toy’ to being an important part of the modern office.

Web Browsers

Web browsers are programs that are designed to display HTML coding. They are used to search and display data from the World Wide Web (www), FTP, USENET, email and other forms of online data. The first true browsers were release in January 1993 for the UNIX system. They were known as Viola and Midas. At around the same time, the graphical browser Mosaic was released by NSCA. The original developers of Mosaic left NSCA soon after the release of Mosaic, to form the Netscape Communication Company. Although Mosaic and Netscape perform the same tasks, Netscape was written from scratch, solving a number of bugs that were inherent in Mosaic. Internet Explorer from Microsoft was developed from Spyglass Mosaic browser for use with the Windows 95 operating system. 3 Presentation Software Some of the more recent software programs are developments from old manual ideas that worked well. Slide shows were very popular, particularly for business presentations. Some of the earliest uses of similar ideas using a computer were on Apple Macintosh systems in the late 1980s. These machines came with a program called Hypercard. It allowed the user to automate the display of screens using simple links and objects for animation and static display. This led to further developments so that computer ‘slide shows’ could be created in word processors and to specialised presentation software. Sources Of Code And The Conditions That Apply There are various sources of code: the Internet, books and magazines, freeware and shareware. The publication of code in one of these forms does not necessarily give a person the right to use it. Each of these sources is covered by the laws of copyright, and the programmers need to be aware of their responsibilities in this regard There are a number of freely accessible sites and newsgroups on the Internet that cater for programmers in many computer languages. This ‘library of code’ has meant that programmers are no longer required to continually develop and retype their code. Code samples obtained from these sources may be free of copyright. Magazines and CDs will include a statement related to copyright issues regarding the code they distribute. Purchase of a book is usually an agreement for you to use a single copy of the code for your own purposes but not to lend it to others. Freeware and shareware are generally not sources of code, as they are covered by the same laws of copyright as commercial software. Some freeware licences do state that the code may be modified but not for profit. However if the code is modified, it is a general courtesy to send a copy of the changed application to the original author. 4

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