Hypergraphics' Simplified User Guide for Microsoft Windows 30

Charles R. Crawford, a mathematics and computer-programming consultant,
was an associate professor of Computer Science at York University.

This book is a short introduction to the Microsoft Windows program for
personal computers. Like other books produced by Hypergraphics, its
style of presentation involves more pictures than words. Although Maran
is listed as the author, Erich Volk, the Artistic Consultant, and Jim
Leung, the Art Director, probably made important contributions to the
creation of the work.

The graphic style is appropriate for this book; Windows is one of
several currently available programs that create a Graphic User
Interface (GUI) between the user and the underlying operating system, in
this case DOS. The GUI describes with pictures what the operating system
is or could be doing. Other examples are the older X-windows for UNIX
and the more modest Desqview for DOS. One of the supposed advantages of
a well-designed GUI is that most of its operations are obvious, or at
least self-explaining. For example, the operation of moving a window on
the screen or changing its size is impossible to explain in a short
review and requires a two-page spread with seven images in the present
book. The operation itself, however, is obvious after a short
demonstration even to a novice user. The need for this book may point to
a problem in the design of Windows.

Beyond the style of the book, its topics could be reordered to provide
more motivation. For example, the discussion of transferring information
between applications should precede that of manipulating windows. In the
process of copying text from a word processor to a spreadsheet, there
are three windows on the screen at the same time. Once you have gone
through that, the need to move and reshape the windows is obvious. In
fact, the section called “Creating a File” could be the first
section. Especially for a reader with some experience using DOS without
Windows, it is natural to begin by describing how single DOS programs
can be run using Windows. Once you have seen what a window is and
created a file, then you are more interested in how to manipulate
windows and organize files and programs.