A graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with electronic devices such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices; household appliances and office equipment with images rather than text commands. A GUI offers graphical icons, and visual indicators, as opposed to text-based interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation to fully represent the information and actions available to a user. The actions are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements.
A widget toolkit, widget library, or GUI toolkit is a set of widgets for use in designing applications with graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The toolkit itself is a piece of software that is generally provided with an operating system, windowing system, or window manager which provides programs with an application programming interface (API), allowing them to make use of widgets. Each widget facilitates a specific user-computer interaction, and appears as a visible part of the computer's GUI.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_toolkit
