The graphical user interface is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces, which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard; the actions in a GUI are performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements. Beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices and smaller household and industrial controls; the term GUI tends not to be applied to other lower-display resolution types of interfaces, such as video games, or not including flat screens, like volumetric displays because the term is restricted to the scope of two-dimensional display screens able to describe generic information, in the tradition of the computer science research at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of software application programming in the area of human–computer interaction. Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the underlying logical design of a stored program, a design discipline named usability. Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the visual language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks; the visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI. Users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to the kind of data they hold; the widgets of a well-designed interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows flexible structures in which the interface is independent from and indirectly linked to application functions, so the GUI can be customized easily; this allows users to select or design a different skin at will, eases the designer's work to change the interface as user needs evolve.

Good user interface design relates to users more, to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, email message or drawing. Smaller ones act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a vertical market as application-specific graphical user interfaces. Examples include automated teller machines, point of sale touchscreens at restaurants, self-service checkouts used in a retail store, airline self-ticketing and check-in, information kiosks in a public space, like a train station or a museum, monitors or control screens in an embedded industrial application which employ a real-time operating system. By the 1980s, cell phones and handheld game systems employed application specific touchscreen GUIs. Newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. Sample graphical desktop environments A GUI uses a combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, for the tasks of gathering and producing information.

A series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to use computer software; the most common combination of such elements in GUIs is the windows, menus, pointer paradigm in personal computers. The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual input device to represent the position of a pointing device's interface, most a mouse, presents information organized in windows and represented with icons. Available commands are compiled together in menus, actions are performed making gestures with the pointing device. A window manager facilitates the interactions between windows and the windowing system; the windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, positioning of the pointer. In personal computers, all these elements are modeled through a desktop metaphor to produce a simulation called a desktop environment in which the display represents a desktop, on which documents and folders of documents can be placed.

Window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Smaller mobile devices such as personal digital assistants and smartphones use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space and available input devices. Applications for which WIMP is not well suited may use newer interaction techniques, collectively termed post-WIMP user interfaces; as of 2011, some touchscreen-based operating systems such as Apple's iOS and Android use the class of GUIs named post-WIMP. These support styles of interaction using more than one finger in contact with a display, which allows actions such as pinching and rotating, which are unsupported by one pointer and mouse. Human interface devices, for the efficient interaction with a GUI include a computer keyboard used together with keyboard shortcuts, pointing devices for the cursor control: mouse, pointing stick, trackball, virtual keyboards, head-up displays. There are actions performed by programs that affect the GUI.

For example, there are components like inotify or D-Bus to facilitate communication between computer programs. Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963 held as t

Yangwu was a wooden corvette built for the Imperial Chinese Navy. She was built in 1872 at the Foochow Arsenal, was the largest ship built there from the shipbuilding programme of 1868–75. During her early career, she was used under the command of English captains, she saw action in the Battle of Fuzhou in 1884, the opening action of the Sino-French War, where she acted as the flagship of the Fujian Fleet. Shortly after the start of the battle, she was damaged by a spar torpedo, causing a large explosion and the loss of the majority of her crew. Yangwu was a unique showpiece at the Foochow Arsenal, she was 190 feet 2 inches long overall, had a beam of 36 feet and an average draft of 16 feet 65 inches. She displaced 1,393 long tons; the propulsion system consisted of a 250-horsepower steam engine, built by John Inglis and Company, equipped with four boilers and a retractable funnel. Her engines produced a cruising speed of 13 knots. Yangwu was armed with a battery of four 5-inch 70-pounder guns on each side, two further mounted as chase guns at the bow and stern.

These were each built by the British firm Armstrong's. A further 6.5-inch 150-pounder at amidships and two 24-pounder long guns rounded out her armament. She was equipped with two gunpowder magazines, located at aft. Yangwu was a wooden corvette, built at the Foochow Navy Yard and launched on April 23, 1872, she was the seventh vessel built as part of a larger shipbuilding program at the Foochow Arsenal, cost 254,000 taels for her construction. She was the largest warship built between 1868–75 out of the 19 vessels planned; the shipyard was overseen by Imperial commissioner Shen Baozhen but led by staff from Western nations, who advised the Chinese to continue building wooden-hulled ships despite them being made obsolete by the construction of ironclads by those nations. Chinese officials would unfairly blame the French, in particular Prosper Giquel, for purposely providing them with out-of-date equipment and designs. After being launched in 1872, she served as a training vessel from 1875 in the South China Sea, making at least one journey to Japan.

Yangwu was equipped with a classroom for the training of Chinese midshipmen and officers. At the time of a report in the Shanghai Courier in June 1876, there were 30 such sailors under tuition, she had been commanded by the Captain Tracey, an Englishman, but he had been recalled to the Royal Navy and promoted to Post-captain. He was replaced with Captain Luxmore. There were two further English members of both officers, while the rest were Chinese. During the summer of 1876, Yangwu visited the Australian colonies, in the year the Chinese ambassadors to Great Britain, Kwoh Song Tao and Liu-Si-hung, visited Yangwu via mail steamer in December while she was in Singapore. Following the visit, she sailed to Manila; when she arrived in February 1877, an accident occurred as the crew were preparing a gun salute for her entrance to the harbour. As the crewman loaded the charge into one of the guns, it detonated, throwing him from the ship and killing him; the crewman was subsequently buried in the city.

Yangwu proved to be a spectacle for the inhabitants of the city the Chinese, some of whom had sailed out to greet her arrival in small boats and others who watched her from the mound on which the lighthouse sat overlooking the bay. On June 23, 1884, as tensions were rising between the French Empire and Imperial China, Yangwu was part of the Chinese fleet at Chefoo which met with a French squadron comprising two cruisers and a sloop. During the course of the meeting, the French demonstrated the firepower of their cruisers, which were nearly two and a half times the size of Yangwu, which in turn was the largest of the Chinese vessels. During the demonstration, the French showed. Afterwards, Yangwu headed to the naval yard at Foochow, while the remaining Chinese ships steamed to the port of Tianjin. On August 9, 1884, French naval forces attacked and captured Keelung on the island of Formosa in response to Chinese involvement in the Tonkin Campaign and the Bắc Lệ ambush. Shortly afterwards, the French Navy′s Far East Squadron under Rear Admiral Amédée Courbet, comprising the cruisers Duguay-Trouin, d'Estaing along with a number of smaller vessels, was sent up the Min River to attack the arsenal at Foochow.

As they travelled upriver, the Chinese declared war on the French marking the start of the Sino-French War. Yangwu led the Fujian Fleet protecting Foochow under the command of Captain Chang Cheng, which otherwise comprised three sloops in addition to a variety of gunboats, transports and war junks; the Royal Navy and United States Navy vessels in the port made certain to anchor a distance away from where the engagement was expected to take place. The vessels faced off for several days before the French forces made their attack, as they were awaiting reinforcement by the ironclad Triomphante, they planned to attack just before 2pm on August 23, with two torpedo boats tasked with engaging Yangwu and the gunboat Fusheng on the first signal. Just prior to 2pm on August 23, the attack began after a broadside from the gunboat Zhenwei at the French gunboat Lynx; this was the signal for the small boats to move forward, some 27 seconds a massive explosion erupted from Yangwu. Boat No. 46 had impacted with her spar torpedo just below the waterline amidships.

The detonation was so large that only fifteen of the crew survived an

Soy sauce spelled as soya sauce, is a liquid condiment of Chinese origin, traditionally made from a fermented paste of soybeans, roasted grain and Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds. Soy sauce in its current form was created about 2,200 years ago during the Western Han dynasty of ancient China, spread throughout East and Southeast Asia where it is used in cooking and as a condiment. Soy sauce can be added directly to food, used as a dip, used to season meat, or be added for flavor in cooking, it is eaten with sushi and sashimi. It can be mixed with ground wasabi. Bottles of soy sauce can be found at dining tables in Japan as a common seasoning. Soy sauce can be stored at room temperature. Shoyu is stored in soft plastic containers. Soy sauce is considered as old as soy paste—a type of fermented paste obtained from soybeans—which had appeared during the Western Han dynasty and was listed in the bamboo slips found in the archaeological site Mawangdui. There are several precursors of soy sauce.

Among them the earliest one is Qingjiang, listed in Simin Yueling. Others are Jiangqing and Chiqing which are recorded in Qimin Yaoshu in AD 540. By the time of the Song dynasty, the term soy sauce had become the accepted name for the liquid condiment, which are documented in two books: Shanjia Qinggong and Pujiang Wushi Zhongkuilu during the Song dynasty. Like many salty condiments, soy sauce was a way to stretch salt an expensive commodity. During the Zhou dynasty of ancient China, fermented fish with salt was used as a condiment in which soybeans were included during the fermentation process. By the time of the Han dynasty, this had been replaced with the recipe for soy paste and its by-product soy sauce, by using soybeans as the principal ingredient, with fermented fish-based sauces developing separately into fish sauce; the 19th century Sinologist Samuel Wells Williams wrote that in China, the best soy sauce is "made by boiling beans soft, adding an equal quantity of wheat or barley, leaving the mass to ferment.

A common Japanese condiment was uoshōyu, fish based. When Buddhism came to Japan from China in the 7th century, they introduced vegetarianism and brought many soy based products with them, such as soya sauce, known as shōyu in Japan. Shoyu exportation began in 1647 by the Dutch East India Company; the earliest soy sauce brewing in Korea seems to have begun prior to the era of the Three Kingdoms c. 57 BCE. The Records of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese historical text written and published in the 3rd century, mentions that "Goguryeo people are good at brewing fermented soy beans." In the section named Dongyi, in the Book of Wei. Jangdoks used for soy sauce brewing are found in the mural paintings of Anak Tomb No.3 from the 4th century Goguryeo. In Samguk Sagi, a historical record of the Three Kingdoms era, it is written that ganjang and doenjang along with meju and jeotgal were prepared for the wedding ceremony of the King Sinmun in February 683. Sikhwaji, a section from Goryeosa, recorded that ganjang and doenjang were included in the relief supplies in 1018, after a Khitan invasion, in 1052, when a famine occurred.

Joseon texts such as Guhwangchwaryo and Jeungbo sallim gyeongje contain the detailed procedures on how to brew good quality ganjang and doenjang. Gyuhap chongseo explains how to pick a date for brewing, what to forbear, how to keep and preserve ganjang and doenjang. Records of the Dutch East India Company list soy sauce as a commodity in 1737, when seventy-five large barrels were shipped from Dejima, Japan, to Batavia on the island of Java. Thirty-five barrels from that shipment were shipped to the Netherlands. In the 18th century and scholar Isaac Titsingh published accounts of brewing soy sauce. Although earlier descriptions of soy sauce had been disseminated in the West, his was among the earliest to focus on the brewing of the Japanese version. By the mid-19th century, Japanese soy sauce disappeared from the European market, the condiment became synonymous with the Chinese product. Europeans were unable to make soy sauce because they did not understand the function of Aspergillus oryzae, the fungus used in its brewing.

Soy sauce made from ingredients such as Portobello mushrooms were disseminated in European cookbooks during the late 18th century. A Swedish recipe for "Soija" was published in the 1770 edition of Cajsa Warg's Hjelpreda i Hushållningen för Unga Fruentimber and was flavored with allspice and mace; the first soy sauce production in the United States began in the Territory of Hawaii in 1908 by the Hawaiian Yamajo Soy Company. La Choy started selling hydrolyzed vegetable protein based soy sauce in 1933. Soy sauce is made either by hydrolysis; some commercial sauces have both chemical sauces. Flavor and aroma developments during production are attributed to non-enzymatic Maillard browning. Variation is achieved as the result of different methods and durations of fermentation, different ratios of water and fermented soy, or through the addition of other ingredients. Traditional soy sauces are made by mixing soybeans and grain with mold cultures such as Aspergillus oryzae and other related microorga