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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 4688–4693Cite as

WIMP Interfaces

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Definition

There exist many types of interaction styles. They include but are not limited to: command line interface, natural language, question/answer and query dialog, form-fills and spreadsheets, WIMP, and three-dimensional interfaces. The most common of the foregoing interaction styles is the WIMP. WIMP is an acronym for Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers. Alternatively, it is an acronym for Windows, Icons, Mice and Pull-down menus. Examples of user interfaces that are based on the WIMP interaction style include: Microsoft Windows for PCs, MacOs for Apple Macintosh, various X Windows-based systems for UNIX, etc.

Historical Background

WIMP interfaces were invented at the SRI laboratory in California. The development of WIMP interfaces continued at Xerox PARC. The 1981 Xerox Star workstation is considered to be the first production computer to use the desktop metaphor, productivity applications and a three-button mouse. WIMP was popularized by the Apple Macintosh in the early 1980s....

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Director ICSIT, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Juja, Kenya

    Stephen Kimani

Authors
  1. Stephen Kimani
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stephen Kimani .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale, Universita di Roma, Roma, 185, Italy

    Tiziana Catarci

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Kimani, S. (2018). WIMP Interfaces. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_467

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