Text-based user interface
part 6/17 · 30.7 KB total
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Most often those programs used a blue background for the main screen, with white or yellow characters, although commonly they had also user color customization. They often used box-drawing characters in IBM's code page 437. Later, the interface became deeply influenced by graphical user interfaces (GUI), adding pull-down menus, overlapping windows, dialog boxes and GUI widgets operated by mnemonics or keyboard shortcuts. Soon mouse input was added – either at text resolution as a simple colored box or at graphical resolution thanks to the ability of the Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) and Video Graphics Array (VGA) display adapters to redefine the text character shapes by software – providing additional functions.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────