User Interfaces

User Interfaces

Name: Ahmed Baha

Class: 9B subject C

Subject: ICT
Command line user interfaces Command line interface is a user interface to a computer's operating system or an application in which the user responds to a visual prompt by typing in a command on a specified line, receives a response back from the system, and then enters another command, and so forth.

A Command Line Interface allows the user to interact directly with the computer system by typing in commands (instructions) into a screen which looks similar to this:

Menu-driven user interfaces
This type of interface lets you interact with a computer or device by working your way through a series of screens or menus.
Think about your iPod or mobile phone, they both use a menu driven interface. You are presented with a menu, you make a choice and then the next menu appears on the screen. You make another choice and so on.
Cashpoint machines (ATMs) are another good example of a menu driven interface.

Advantages disadvantages Most end-users are quite familiar with using menus to issue commands to a program. Because menu-driven programs usually have redundant ways of doing things, you may have to do extra coding, i.e., synchronize the menu items' states with that of their counter-parts on the toolbar or context menu
Menu's are a convenient way to bundle related common commands, i.e., under a single main menu. This allows a programmer to create a separate module for each type of menu functionality.
If the programmer does not take care—or is overly ambitious—a menu can easily become too cluttered if an abundance of selections is available for the user.

Graphical user interfaces
Short for Graphical User Interface, a GUI (pronounced as either G-U-I or gooey) allows the use of icons or other visual indicators to interact with electronic devices; rather than using only text via the command line. For example, all versions of Microsoft Windows utilize a GUI whereas MS-DOS does not. The GUI was first developed at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Douglas Engelbart, and a group of other researchers in 1981. Later, Apple introduced the Lisa computer.

Advantages
Disadvantages
This type of user interface is easy to use, especially for a beginner
GUIs take up a much larger amount of hard disk space than other interface
It is easy to explore and find your way around the system using a WIMP/ GUI interface
They need significantly more memory (RAM) to run than other interface types