Evidence supporting claim that Jeffrey Greenberg created the first publically available drag & drop interface for Windows.

Aporia shareware was the first public commercial drag & drop interface for Microsoft Windows

Aporia is the name of the first drag & drop software available for Microsoft Windows. Initial versions were released in 1988-1989.

Here are provided the information the authors of Aporia have to support this claim.

This page is a work in progress.

We did not invent the term "drag & drop". That came sometime during or after 1991 we believe. We had differernt terms for icons and their manipulation (and not very effective ones from a marketing perspective), but we were the first with the capabilities on Windows. We used "desks" and "tools" instead of folder and icons. It did let you print by dragging and dropping.

Drag & Drop Capability

Timeline

Here are the main applications that provided or replaced the interface Microsoft provided for Windows.

1989 and earlier<--> 1988<--> 1989<--> 1990<--> 1991<--> 1992<--> 1993<--> 1994<--> 1995<-->

Platform / OS	1988 & earlier	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995
Non-PC iconic interfaces	Xerox star Mac provided a limited interface. e.g. -Could drag&drop icon onto trash, but could not drag&drop onto printer Sun Workstation
PC interfaces: DOS	topview - ibm, and alternative OS desqview - non-iconic alterative OS
PC interfaces: Windows	Windows 2.0 / 286	Aporia - first iconic drag and drop interface for windows. Released on bulleitin boards and upgraded during the year. Release for Windows 286 &386 Released as freeware/shareware Bulletin Board Releases Changes List	Aporia released for Windows 3.0 and shown publically at the Boston Computer show Aporia Brochure for Boston Computer Show Released as shareware	Various commercial products Aporia released as wintools hdc Norton Desktop Central Point Xerox hp - NewView	-	-	-	Microsoft creates a full drag&drop interface. Windows 95 released by Microsoft

The key thing to note is that there were no other iconic or drag&drop interfaces to Windows before 1989 and no other compeitors until HP NewView began their releaes.

Windows Shell Feature Comparison: 1989

The 'shell' was the technical name for the interface to the operating system, as in a shell around the operating system making it more easily useful to users.

Windows 2.x & 3.0	Aporia 0.1 - 1.1
At the time Microsoft provided this interface for Windows 2.0 which provided, and Windows 3.0 was about to be released. These two versions allowed programmers to replace the interface (aka Windows Shell) with one of their own making. The interface they provided were windows with icons in them. Clicking on the icons launced a program. Folders were not hierarchal.	Aporia used some language and visual design that was not generally adopted... instead of "icons" it used "tools" instead of "folders" it used "desks" it used an tree icon instead of a folder icon to look at the heirarchiy of files

Aporia was the first Windows program to allow

icons on the desktop

folders on the desktop

drag and drop onto all icons: one or more icons could dragged and dropped onto another to cause an action to occur

specialized (system) icons for p

icons that could run a script

icons could be locked into position, aligned

icons could be different sizes, serve as buttons, have customizable images and backgrounds

It was later commercialized and released in 1991.

Aporia History

1988

releases as shareware by Jeffrey Greenberg to various software boards.

1989

Development 1989

Functional Specification

Code Exccerpt

Shareware .1 release

Package information

.04 release: Jun 1989
Michael Davis joined to create the file system access portions, which included the ability to drag a file or directory from the graphical folder display and drop it on the desktop
Boston Computer Show, 1990

brochures

Preparation for commercial release and funding

1990

1991

1992

1993

About Creating the Interface - Jeffrey Greenberg

1979-1988

I had been working some years before in Harold Cohen's studio at UCSD on one of the first sites on the internet, and on software for his AI program Aaron. After that I went to Auragen and was part of the core team of 6 working on a fundamental Unix rewrite to support software fault-tolerance documented in this paper. Victor Yodaiken and my self, along with David Arnow built this thing. The unix interface was completely terminal based(BSD v7, Unix 3, 4) but it had the idea of shells and pipe commands for chaining together small programs to get work done. CRT screens were expensive and anything that could draw a line was state-of-the-art.

I had seen the new Mac interface in 1986 but it was primitive, notably: you could drag a file onto a trash but not onto the printer. Still it was progress. I had also seen the Xerox Star interface, but found it very difficult to understand, and a the interface to the Sun Workstation.

I had been working on windows as an experimental interface to produce some of the earliest multimedia/interactive commercials every created for Trintex ()... ads for Macy's. A number of notable folks worked in that team including Judith Donath.

1984

saw interface for Sun Workstate created by a company name

Aporia

Aporia started as an effort to provide an iconic interface to windows that allowed some of the capability of the Unix shells of that time (sh, csh, zsh, etc).

Unique Interface Features

It had some funky and unique features:

icons could of different sizes/shapes.
Icons could be locked down on the screen to create visual menus.
This was used by Checmical Bank in NYC for a while.
You could create collections of icons, and have them represented by a single icon. This is like a folder of shortcuts
Icons' borders changed when the program they represented ran.
You could drag a running program's icon onto the the 'close' tool to exit the program
Icons could position the programs they ran into a fixed position on the screen
Later versions tied into a virtual screen program we supplied, "BigSky" and could launch and control programs on other virtual screens