graphical user interface

A graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with a computer and computer-controlled devices which employ graphical icons, visual indicators or special graphical elements called "widgets", along with text, labels or text navigation to represent the information and actions available to a user. The actions are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements.
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A computer program or environment that displays options on the screen as icons, i.e., picture symbols, by which users enter commands by selecting an icon. Note: Icons may be selected, e.g. , by pressing the <ENTER> key on the keyboard, by "clicking" a computer mouse button, or by touching the icon on a touch pad.

<operating system> (GUI) The use of pictures rather than just words to represent the input and output of a program. A program with a GUI runs under some windowing system (e.g. The X Window System, MacOS, Microsoft Windows, Acorn RISC OS, NEXTSTEP). The program displays certain icons, buttons, dialogue boxes, etc. in its windows on the screen and the user controls it mainly by moving a pointer on the screen (typically controlled by a mouse) and selecting certain objects by pressing buttons on the mouse while the pointer is pointing at them. This contrasts with a command line interface where communication is by exchange of strings of text.
Windowing systems started with the first real-time graphic display systems for computers, namely the SAGE Project [Dates?] and Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad (1963). Douglas Engelbart's Augmentation of Human Intellect project at SRI in the 1960s developed the On-Line System, which incorporated a mouse-driven cursor and multiple windows. Several people from Engelbart's project went to Xerox PARC in the early 1970s, most importantly his senior engineer, Bill English. The Xerox PARC team established the WIMP concept, which appeared commercially in the Xerox 8010 (Star) system in 1981.
Beginning in 1980(?), led by Jef Raskin, the Macintosh team at Apple Computer (which included former members of the Xerox PARC group) continued to develop such ideas in the first commercially successful product to use a GUI, the Apple Macintosh, released in January 1984. In 2001 Apple introduced Mac OS X.
Microsoft modeled the first version of Windows, released in 1985, on Mac OS. Windows was a GUI for MS-DOS that had been shipped with IBM PC and compatible computers since 1981. Apple sued Microsoft over infringement of the look-and-feel of the MacOS. The court case ran for many years.
[Wikipedia].
(2002-03-25)

Noun
1. a user interface based on graphics (icons and pictures and menus) instead of text; uses a mouse as well as a keyboard as an input device
(synonym) GUI
(hypernym) interface, user interface
(part-meronym) dialog box, panel