Alford Academy Business Education and Computing1 Advanced Higher Computing Based on Heriot-Watt University Scholar Materials GUI – advantages and disadvantages

Alford Academy Business Education and Computing2 Lesson Objectives Capabilities of Graphical User Interfaces Advantages and Disadvantages of GUIs Special Purpose Interfaces

Alford Academy Business Education and Computing 3 Capabilities of Graphical User Interfaces With a graphical user interface you provide the capability to carry out many varied operations of benefit to the user: WISYWIG – What You See Is What YOU Get – the image on the screen (text or otherwise) should be an exact image of what you will see on paper Image scanning – instant visual representation of the scanned image on screen and so instant feedback from the user Processable Graphics – applications such as Photoshop and Fireworks as image manipulation packages Animations and support for multimedia – now a very wide application area ranging from visually oriented teaching resources to touch- sensitive information kiosks Provision for users with disabilities - configuring desktop interfaces for visually impaired, background colours to provide sharper contrast

Alford Academy Business Education and Computing 4 Advantages and Disadvantages of GUIs ADVANTAGES On average, users can readily operate the computer and feels more in control and not intimidated by it User learning time is short – does not take long to open the box, assemble the kit and start to do productive work With prompts and alerts and mouse movements and double-clicking on objects, etc. users get instant feedback on their actions Mistakes can be more readily detected than with command line interfaces and they can be more easily corrected Once you have learned to use one WIMP based operating system then it is simpler to transfer those skills to using a different OS eg Windows VS Mac OS

Alford Academy Business Education and Computing 5 Advantages and Disadvantages of GUIs DISADVANTAGES Graphical user interfaces need large amounts of memory and fast processors to display the images and manipulate them interactively Skilled users feel that they can accomplish tasks using fewer steps than with a GUI eg copying a file – CP, Users with certain disabilities (vision/motor) can still have trouble using GUIs Screens can easily become cluttered and difficult to navigate

Alford Academy Business Education and Computing 6 Special Purpose Interfaces ACTIVITIES Use the internet to investigate 3 of the special purpose interfaces on table 2.2 in page 44 of the Scholar booklet – Touchscreens, Speech to support disabilities and Speech input systems Take printouts of the devices and their interfaces to form part of your study notes

Alford Academy Business Education and Computing 7 Activities Read pages 42 – 44 of the Scholar booklet Answer Review questions 6on page 45 of the Scholar booklet Complete the End of Topic questions on page 45 – 48 Revise this topic for an end of topic test in one week’s time.