Graphical Shells
A graphical user interface (GUI) represents programs and data using visual symbols instead of text. Graphical user interfaces became feasible as the cost of interactive computer graphic hardware declined. Most graphical user interfaces develop the metaphor of an "electronic desktop", where data files are represented as if paper documents on a desk, and application programs similarly have graphical representations instead of being invoked by command names.
Read more about this topic: Shell (computing)
Famous quotes containing the word shells:
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)