WIMP

The four elements

• Windows — areas of the screen set apart for each application or document. Several can be placed side by side and used at once
• Icons — small pictorial symbols representing files, folders, applications and so on
• Menus — lists of the operations available to choose from
• Pointer — the arrow on the screen moved with a mouse or trackpad. It points at a target to select or operate on it

The expansion of the acronym varies: M is sometimes read as mouse, and P as pull-down menu or pointing.

History

WIMP-style operation was developed at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the 1970s. The Xerox Alto of 1973, with its bitmap display, windows and mouse-driven pointer, was its prototype. Steve Jobs's visit to PARC in 1979, where he saw the Alto's GUI, is said to have influenced the later Macintosh. The Macintosh, released in 1984, added concepts such as the menu bar and spread the style widely, and Microsoft Windows then made it commonplace.

The word "WIMP" itself is said to have appeared around 1980^※1.

Criticism and post-WIMP

While WIMP suits general-purpose operation, it has been pointed out that it is ill suited to uses requiring input in three or more dimensions or high-precision input. Because it assumes that the user can see the screen and move the pointer finely, it also has aspects that are hard to use for people with visual or motor impairments. Research into touch, gesture, voice, three-dimensional interfaces and the like that tries to go beyond these limits is called "post-WIMP".