What interfaces mean: a history and sociology of computer windows

Abstract

This poster presents a cursory look at the history of windows in Graphical User Interfaces. It examines the controversy between tiling and overlapping window managers and explains that controversy's sociological importance: windows are control devices, enabling their users to manage their activity and attention. It then explores a few possible reasons for the relative disappearance of windowing in recent computing devices. It concludes with a recapitulative typology.