Taskbar

The taskbar is a graphical user interface element that has been part of Microsoft Windows since Windows 95, displaying and facilitating switching between running programs. The taskbar and the associated Start Menu were created and named in 1993 by Daniel Oran, a program manager at Microsoft who had previously collaborated on great ape language research with the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner at Harvard.[1][2][3][4]

The taskbar is an exemplar of a category of always-visible graphical user interface elements that provide access to fundamental operating system functions and information. At the time of its introduction in 1995, the taskbar was unique among such elements because it provided the user with a means of switching between running programs through a single click of the pointing device.

Since the introduction of Windows 95, other operating systems have incorporated graphical user interface elements that closely resemble the taskbar or have similar features. The designs vary, but generally include a strip along one edge of the screen. Icons or textual descriptions on this strip correspond to open windows. Clicking the icons or text enables the user to easily switch between windows, with the active window often appearing differently from the others on the strip. In some versions of recent operating systems, users can "pin" programs or files to this strip for quick access. In many cases, there is also a notification area, which includes interactive icons that display real-time information about the computer system and some of the running programs.

With the rapid evolution of operating systems and graphical user interfaces, items that are native to each operating system have been included in the various designs.

  1. ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (1998-07-09). "Books of the Times; A Jungle? It's Murder, It's a Conspiracy". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2023-03-22. Retrieved 2023-03-22.
  2. ^ Weinberger, Matt (2015-07-30). "'He was literally a rocket scientist. And even he couldn't figure out Windows.'". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2015-08-07. Retrieved 2024-04-26.
  3. ^ Andrews, Paul (1999). How the Web was won : Microsoft from Windows to the Web : the inside story of how Bill Gates and his band of internet idealists transformed a software empire (1st ed.). New York: Broadway Books. pp. 244–5. ISBN 0-7679-0048-0. OCLC 40820951.
  4. ^ Inside out : Microsoft--in our own words. Microsoft Corporation. New York, NY: Warner Books. 2000. p. 30. ISBN 0-446-52739-4. OCLC 45226466.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)