GAINING GENERAL ACCEPTANCE FOR UIMSs.

Abstract

User Interface Management Systems (UIMSs) have now gained acceptance in the research and business communities. Unfortunately, they are still not widely available or used. This paper proposes three reasons for this: that they are too hard to use; that they are still too limited in the types of interfaces that they can create; and that they are not portable with respect to different machines, operating systems and graphics systems. UIMSs can be made easier to use by avoiding programming-language-like techniques, and they can be made more functional by providing the ability to create direct manipulation interaction techniques and to integrate them into modern interfaces. UIMSs can be made more portable by inventing new input models and graphics packages that are appropriate for highly-interactive interfaces and that can work in various environments.