Xerox Star User Interface: An overview
David C Smith, Charles Irby, Xerox PARC

CHI '90 Technical Video Program
Session: User Interface Technologies and Applications

Abstract
This film is offered as an histori­cal document. It provides peo­ple who may not be familiar with the Xerox Star personal comput­er an opportunity to learn a little about it. It was made in 1982 by two of the designers of Star: Da­vid Canfield Smith and Charles Irby. It was intended to illustrate Star's principal contributions to computer user interfaces. Some contributions have had a major effect on the personal computer industry, including icons, a Desktop metaphor with a direct manipulation interface, property and option sheets, and generic commands. In some ways, such as its use of the Move, Copy and Delete func­tions, Star remains unsurpassed in the consistency of its inter­face. Other features, such as multilingual multimedia docu­ments, are just now beginning to appear in other systems. In watching the film, the viewer is urged to keep in mind the histor­ical perspective of 1981, when Star was first released.

WEB:: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/chivideoslist

Published as Issues 5556 of ACM SIGGRAPH Video Review.
Video Chair: Brad Myers (Carnegie Mellon University)
Location: Austin, TX, USA