Interface Components and Interaction Styles

Abstract

User interfaces are now commonly built from a set of components with support tools into UI development environments. Most operating systems now provide basic UI building blocks and a means of integrating and calling them from a programming language. Interfaces composed of these components often have a similar appearance and behaviour. This so-called ‘look and feel’ is enforced by vendors of the operating system and its UI construction environment. The more common look and feel UI styles are:

• IBM’s CUA (Common User Access), which is implemented on all IBM operating systems, e.g. PS/2, VMS, RS-Unix.

• Apple Macintosh and its successor Bedrock. The Apple Mac environment is only available on Apple machines through the MacApp developers toolkit; Bedrock, however, will be a portable environment.

• OSF/Motif. This is the common style for Unix operating systems using the X-Windows management system.