History
With early Graphical User Interfaces to execute an application or render a file, the user had to click on the representation of the actual file or executable in the location where the application or file was.
The concept of disassociating the executable from the icon representing an instruction to perform a task associated with that file or executable so that they may be grouped by function or task rather than physical organisation in the file structure was first described in the research paper "A Task Oriented Front End For The Windows Graphical User Interface", published in 1991 by Kingston University and presented to both Microsoft and Xerox EuroPARC that same year under an academia/business technology sharing agreement.
A simplified form of this research was incorporated into System 7 in 1991, and four years later into Windows 95.
Read more about this topic: File Shortcut
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)